Camp Jupiter Reads PJ and the Lightning Thief
by oyprongs
Summary: Reyna is delivered a book by Mercury. Can you guess what book it is? Pre-SoN. Slightly AU. A/N inside.
1. Author's Note

Author's Note

Okay, this is going to be another: The camp reads his life story, story.

But, before I get started I need characters. Now of course I will use the obvious: Reyna, Hazel, Frank, Bobby, Dakota. Alright, this is weird I don't remember what role Bobby played but I thought before I read Son of Neptune he would be important, he isn't but I might use him anyway.

This is pre-Percy arrives at Camp Jupiter even though the book came out a while ago. But I kinda want you guys to see some of the characters through my eyes.

It is also AU. Some of the characters godly parents are wrong because this is who I thought their parent would be before the book came out. EXAMPLE: Before the book came out I got used to the idea of Hazel being a daughter of Apollo.

It's also AU for many other reasons. For one, I don't think that Reyna is girlfriend to Jason because I am a HUGE Jason/Piper fan. Therefore I am also toying with the idea of a love triangle between Reyna, Annabeth, and Percy. I am the BIGGEST Percbeth fan on the planet but then I think….what if? In the end it won't matter because I don't have the heart to break them up and if I feel like it Percy will start getting suspicions of them being boyfriend-girlfriend in the Battle of the Labyrinth. I know it's pretty obvious in the Titans Curse but my excuse will be his fatal flaw: Personal Loyalty. Meaning that he would do it for anyone he loves.

Oh yeah, did you catch that? I hope to do all the books.

Another AU thingy is that Hazel and Frank wont be dating until the probably very end. They don't know each other until the books bring them together. Hazel won't have the past blackouts to worry about cause' I don't even know If I will be using her POV.

Here are some things to put on your character ideas…..

Name

Godly Parent

Power? If they have any

Rank/ social standing (how do people look at them?)

Friends (who are they're friends? godly parents? Blah blah blah?)

Secrets ( Ok, to tell the truth I stole that one from UnoWhorulesfancfic, something or another. Because I think it hilarious how Sean is so protective over Reyna when she's mostly irritated w/ him. If you don't know what I'm talking about go check it out "The Legion reads Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief." Maybe I shouldn't have said that, depending whether or not you'll still be interested in this fanfic after you read it.)

WARNING: If you don't give me enough info about character or I think it could use some changing I will alter the character. Maybe because I already have one like that or just something…. Don't take it personally.

The last thing you should know is that I don't have that consistent of updates and that eventually I will update because I have a guilty conscience but that's mostly it.

This isn't my first Fanfic I am using a different account because I don't want my other stories to alter the way I made the characters in this fanfic because of my past fanfics. Nothing bad pretty mild stuff, just used the same characters in different predicaments.

Please put character profiles in reviews my other messaging thingy doesn't work. You can do more than one and the sooner and more you submit means that the faster the update will be!


	2. Meeting Reyna

**Hey! So, I am proud to say that this fanfic has gotten 12 subscribers and I haven't even started the story yet! But I am disappointed by how many people who saw the story but didn't submit or review a character. I'm not asking you to because I am lazy. I'm asking you because I make cheesy OCs. That is under-exaggerating. Thank you to that one friendly someone who did review and yes I've decided thanks to you I will be including him in the story. I'm still taking characters!**

**Reyna POV**

She found the book the second month after Jason's disappearance. She didn't admit that to herself though.

Reyna had trouble admitting that her fellow praetor had disappeared. She saw him as the noble, brave and kind hearted leader, how could someone like that disappear over the course of a night without a trace?

The answer: they don't. Unless some godly force was involved. Reyna had her suspicions but would it be worth accusing a god far more powerful and could burn her to ashes with a snap of the finger? No, it wasn't.

Reyna was smart that way, being the daughter of Bellona. Bellona, being the sister of Mars, seemed to have developed twice the brain because somehow it seemed that she had her's and Mars's. Also meaning that she had twice the common sense too.

So Reyna was just as athletic as the children of Mars, twice as smart, and inherited her mother's good looks.

That was a strong combination that won her the position of praetor.

But since Jason disappeared they had no second praetor and that meant half of the defenses of Camp Jupiter were down. They had to act fast.

That was the reason that when she stepped into the praetor's cabin the floor was littered with notes of recommendation for new praetor.

Mostly Octavian. And half of those notes Reyna could prove were written by Octavian himself in different handwriting styles.

Most of the notes she kicked aside to pick up and throw in the trash later, but right now she was to tired. Now that Jason was on his "quest" Reyna could dominate in deathball, and capture the flag or whatever other evening activity they had planned. Jason was the only one who could defeat her at any of those activities. I didn't mean that he always won it just meant that he was the only one who could beat her. Ever.

And as everyone at camp knew, that was a pretty prestigious place to be.

Reyna had just hopped into her bed when her left foot kicked something to the ground, bending low to pick it up she recognized it as a book. A book she hadn't seen before, anywhere even in here cabin.

There was a golden post-it note stuck to the back cover of the book.

Immediately she rolled her eyes. It was pretty obvious who it was from. This is how all the kids who were somehow related to Lord Mercury had gotten all those free post-it notes. That god himself came to camp often to gloat about the worldwide phenomenon that he made. Reyna recalled last week when he last came: "You can stick it to anything! Watch this!" he said before he stuck a royal blue one to Reyna's forehead, making the whole camp laugh. All Reyna did was rip it off and crumple it before she could see what it said.

Then acting like he owned the place and threw a pack to a daughter of Venus. All he did was wink and disappear while the daughter of Venus giggled and huddled with her frinds whispering over it.

Reyna read the note:

_My one and only praetor ;) ,_

That statement made Reyna's stomach gurgle.

_As you are aware Jason has gone missing_

I knew before you, you micro brain idiot!

_And to prepare you for the future I have decided to help you in ways the other gods and goddesses can't or won't._

_So I have stolen this directly from Lady Juno's night stand!_

_Your very own God of thieves,_

_Lord Mercury_

_P.S. There's a list attached to pg. 35 of the people you should read this with. After those people bring whoever you want nobody will know._

Oh my gods! If Juno knew I had this… I don't know what would happen and that's what scares me! I should return this right away. But then she'd think I had stolen it! Hard decision… I can't return this to Mercury he'd be offended. What Juno doesn't know won't hurt her.

On page 35 there was a short list of people that I am supposed to read this with.

Bobby,

Hazel,

Frank,

Naomi,

Gwen,

Dakota.

Maybe Mercury was smart after all. I mean only someone who paid close attention to our camp would know that Naomi, didn't go anywhere without Gwen and therefore would create a hissy fit that would disrupt the whole camp and they would all want to read the life of the guy on the cover, Percy Jackson.

I gathered everyone up and we met in a clearing in the woods off to the left of the field of Mars. I was the only one who knew of the place and because I came here often the nymphs were used to serving me my meals here.

And this book better be worth it if I was going to reveal my secret hiding place to a bunch of other campers.

It made me wonder… if this book ended does that mean that Percy Jackson died?

I checked the back and saw a sneak peak to the sequel. Uh oh! I haven't even read the book yet and I already care whether or not Percy dies! I can only imagine it will get worse when we're halfway through!

That was when the last person arrived. (Gwen who I was sure was last because she was reapplying her make-up…. Daughters of Venus…)

I quickly explained to them the note I had gotten from Mercury and passed around the book. I knew it was coming but couldn't help but flinch. Curse Naomi, she may be a daughter of Venus but isn't daft.

"Shouldn't Octavian be here? I mean, Lord Mercury said that this would play an impact on the future, and you know the future… well Octavian does."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. "The future, Octavian? You aren't serious, are you?"

That was when the devil himself stepped out from behind a tree.

"I heard I was needed, I am here as I always have been and always will." Octavian emphasized the always and I knew what he was playing at, he still wanted to be praetor.

"You don't need to explain the mystery book I already know. Let's just continue." He added this for the benefit

I gave him one last glare before I turned back to the book. I could feel people's eyes burning holes in my head, waiting for me to begin.

I opened it and read the chapter title aloud.

**"I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher."**

I look up and meet the eyes of the campers staring back.

All at the same moment, we burst out laughing.

**What do you think? I am still taking characters for later in the book. Please tell me what you think!**


	3. We Meet Percy

**Wow! I seriously jumped a foot in the air when I saw my email inbox today. 30 alerts/ favorites when I only wrote one true chapter! I am still a little disappointed with how many reviews I had got when 29 people have liked this story enough to favorite it. That means at least half of those people should have reviewed. You took your time to favorite it can you at least tell me why you like it? And just so you know I can't keep writing the chapters at this pace (once a day). I will try, but every time I see the alerts I get excited for this story.**

**Reyna's POV**

* * *

><p>Once they all caught their breath and thought about the absurdity of the chapter Reyna realized that Octavian was the only one who did not laugh. He was also the only one oblivious to the awkward silence he created.<p>

He just stared calmly back at us waiting for me to continue. I shot an uneasy glance at Hazel before resuming where I left off.

**"I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher" **I repeated.

**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. **

"Oh, yay! We get to hear yet another story of a tortured half blood!" Frank smiled cheerfully.

Because he was a son of Mars no one would think that he had humor that rivaled the children of Mercury. That was something that Mercury's kids resented him for.

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. **

"NOW he tells us! Thanks a lot kid!" Naomi screeched. Gwen and I exchanged a look that clearly said 'she's stupid, who wouldn't want to be us!' All Frank did was plug his ears.

**Believe what ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

**Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

"Like Bob!" Octavian exclaimed, "do you remember him? He had a nasty fate."

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**

"You wish it was fiction!"

**But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before **_**they **_**sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

All Naomi did was roll her eyes.

**My name is Percy Jackson. **

**I'm twelve years old. Until a **_**few **_**months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

**Am I a troubled kid?**

**Yeah. You could say that.**

"If you weren't a troubled kid you wouldn't be writing it all in a book like a diary." Octavian just snorted. We were barely into the book and he was already decided that he hated the poor kid.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff. **

"He lives in New York? That place is infested with monsters! Worse than it is here! That kid is a goner!" I said. I could help but wonder why it was so bad there. Monsters lived in places that were populated with demi-gods. I had always assumed because they could attack if a god walked out of the empire state building.

Monsters are idiots.

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

"No it is not! It's like learning about your ancestors! Like the other day I learned that King Minos is my Great 94x Uncle!"

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

**Boy, was I wrong.**

**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

"ummm. Wow, if there was any doubt he wasn't a godling, it's gone now!" Gwen cried.

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover** **in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

"I am guessing he's a faun. He better stay there or else who knows how long Percy would last." I told everyone before continuing.

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

"I can't have enchiladas, they give me gas." Bobby told everyone this huge secret.

"A little too much info there!" Hazel shouted this before he could keep going.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

"You're going to need a knife first." Bobby began empting his pockets as if he could loan Percy his.

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch. **

"With or without the ketchup?" Octavian joked. Who knew he did such a thing? But I took that back the moment he winked at me.

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there.**

**In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a **_**stele, **_**for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

"That's so funny! She's a biker and yet a rebel hater!" Frank burst into peals of laughter.

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

"Okay, so the biker is Mexican?"

Everyone ignored the unknown speaker.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you **_**shut up**_**?"**

" probably thought Percy was talking to him."

I replied to Hazel, "Noooo."

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

"Kronos! Sounds like a space pizza…. What's a Kronos?" Naomi asked.

Before anyone could say anything Octavian shot her a whithering look.

"To us, he is known as Saturn. It's understandable that in their latin class the students have to learn Greek and Roman." I supplied.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he **_**did **_**this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,** **and—"**

Only an idiot would mistake a Titan for a God. No one said it but we all were thinking it. I could tell because we all rolled our eyes as soon as I read it out loud.

**God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

"Zeus is kinda like Jupiter." Gwen explained to Naomi.

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

**Some snickers from the group.**

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

"To get into Camp Jupiter University you have to explain why Saturn ate his kids… So yeah." Bobby snarled at the book.

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.**

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. **

**The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

"Yep, because talking about death always makes me hungry." We all looked at Frank. At least he looked ashamed.

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

"Maybe he is…"

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

"He knows you are a demi god and wants you to be powerful!" I shouted at the book.

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever **_**lived, **_**and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be **_**as good; **_**he expected me to be **_**better. **_**And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

"Don't feel bad the highest I've ever gotten was a B plus." Great. Now they've got me talking to a book too.

"WHAT! That is too high for someone of Dyslexia and ADHD." Frank complained.

"What can I say? My wisdom rivals kids of Minerva." I boasted.

"Don't let them hear you saying that, because if there is one difference between Bellona and Minerva it's that Bellona is better in combat and Minerva is great in sneak attacks and stradigy." Frank explained. Like I don't know the difference. Then it hit me for the first time. Minerva was sister to Mars, that meant all of us were gifted in the combat/strategy/ wisdom thing. It also meant children of Minerva were my first cousins, and closest family.

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

We all looked at eachother. This was serious. Why hadn't we heard about it? Then I checked the copy write date, 5 years ago. I looked it up on the emergency laptop. Being praetor had it's benefits. Yep, there had been a huge hurricane brewing. The site didn't say if it stopped or not but it could have been on for years without us knowing so the source was useless.

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from **_**that **_**school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

We all started laughing. Leave it to a Faun to ease the tension.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. **

**I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

Gwen wimpered, and Octavian gave me a look that clearly said 'he still lives with his mom?' that is surprising because usually kids come here by the age of 5-7. It also said 'this guys a goner, let's ditch the book. But it was too late I was starting to care. I was starting to care whether or not this guy made it here alive.

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

"Umm.. wouldn't that make it look like he was bleeding his pants with the ketchup?" Bobby asked. Leave it to the son of Mercury to ask the dumbest questions.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

"Make over!" Naomi said in a sing-song voice.

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears**

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

"Gods, he can manipulate the elements!" I stated wide eyed.

" That's impossible—"

"Diana is the maiden goddess!"

Then I realized. I can be so stupid. Percy had a mother waiting for him at home so he cant have Lady Diana as a parent. Sometimes Arche brother of Nemesis had that power maybe Percy got it.

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

"A grandmother biker, wow." That was all Bobby could say at the moment.

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"I love this guy! AND he's psychic!" Another comment from Bobby.

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. **_**I **_**pushed her."**

"He must be terrified!"

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—**_**will**_—**stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "**_**Now**_**."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

"The knife Percy, the knife!" Bobby interrupted again.

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

**I wasn't so sure.**

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan. **

We all exchanged worried looks.

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

By now we were all suspicious.

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

Our eyes widened. What, with pushing Nancy in the fountain? Yeah right! … She sounded like a real monster.. Maybe she was referring to the storm. He was in a bad mood and the weather was part of the elements.

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**

"Now THAT is hilarious! I don't know their punishments but that sounds harsh!"

**Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on **_**Tom Sawyer **_**from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

That make Bobby laugh. "I MUST meet this kid! We could torment the Minerva kids together!"

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

Oh gods! A Dirae there! This kid is a goner. It's a wonder he made it past seven. I wish I could stop reading. It's a huge let down that this kid was going to die in the beginning of the book. Somehow without knowing it I had gotten attached.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"Has that teacher gone nutters!" Hazel exclaimed.

A pen. A PEN!

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. **_**Hisss!**_

**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

I almost cried in relief. A pen. A magic item. This kid had sense. And in every way of his being we all knew he was powerful. Whoever his teacher was, Percy passed the test.

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

Poor guy, he still had no idea what was going on.

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

**I said, "Who?"**

"What the crap!" we were just as confused as he was.

**"Our **_**teacher.**_ **Duh!"**

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

"Ohhh! The mist!"

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"He is totally giving himself away!

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

"The weather agrees!"

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

"He just made this confusing with one guys good at lying and one guys bad?"

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

* * *

><p>Author's note<p>

Can you believe it? That was awesome! And twenty six pages! Well most of it belongs to Rick Riordan. Did you see that? Along with my note I added a disclaimer! Okay, I think I might now lecture you in the importance on reviewing. If you care enough to favorite the story, then it should not be so hard to write what you think in a review. Not only will it make me feel good it will make me a better author! Yes it is a win, win situation because then, I will update faster! I pinky promise. I might even add a poll to my profile. Who's the better character Percy or Jason? Of course I pick Percy. If I didn't I would not be writing a story with him as the main protagonist! And for those of you who have read Son of Neptune can you wait for The Mark of Athena? I will not give anything away ok? I can't wait! I think about it at least twice a day. Last year before it came out it was way worse. I could not help but think, is Percy dead? But of course he is not dead! If Percy was dead he would have me to deal with!

Along with completing a very long chapter I can now also be a beta on this account! How exciting! I have never done it before and I think I might try depending on how commited I am to this story.

PLEASE REVIEW!


	4. Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death

**Hola! I'm back again! Are you surprised by my Uber Fast update? I am making up for the slow update because I am busy tomorrow! And there was a comment that really motivated me, yes I can't wait for the Greek Camp to be discovered too! Percy is scheduled to arrive after the chapter of Capture the Flag. So he will be there to confirm their worst nightmares.**** ;) ****Someone also commented that they like Percy more because we know him more. I bet that is most of the reason I like him too. But I think that I like Percy more in general anyway.****Another quick thing: I couldn't find the roman form of Atlas anywhere and I get the feeling he only has a Greek form. Please play pretend with me and ignore it.**

* * *

><p>The first chapter ended five minutes ago and we were still discussing the first chapter. We each had a different opinion on Percy Jackson.<p>

I thought he was mysterious, mostly because I don't understand him. He had no training whatsoever and yet he single handedly defeated a dirae without even knowing he was a demi god! This is unbelievable. He had more action in the first chapter of his life story than I had in all my quests put together. I am proud to say I have the most quests than everyone in camp.

Well Jason and I tied, we both have five. Four of which we have led together.

But there was one thing that we all agreed on, and that was that Percy Jackson had power.

He had more power than some of the campers who have been training here for three years.

We snapped back to action when we heard the groaning.

It came from behind the closest tree to the gathering.

"Ahrrrrahhhhhggghhh! …."

We all sat tense with horrified anticipation.

"…mmmmmhhhh… Kkkoool Aidddd…."

All our eyes widened in shock. We hadn't even noticed Dakota missing! Immediately I felt terrible.

"Dakota!" I cried " I am so sorry! I had completely forgotten about you! What part did you go to sleep at?"

Dakota slowly crawled out from behind his hiding place.

" I fell asleep at the part where a mystery dude was warning us."

"So you didn't make it three words in? Congrats dude it is a new record!" Frank snorted sarcastically.

"It was further than three words…"

"So seven then was it?" Octavian joined in.

"No."

"Oops I've forgotten the word "I" does not count. Make it six." Octavian guessed again. This made the other campers smile. They all started laughing when Dakota didn't respond.

Of course Dakota didn't notice, he was too busy ordering cherry Kool Aid from the nymphs.

Reyna checked her watch and realized they missed supper. That meant that they were missing the evening activity to.

" Hey guys, how about we order dinner and skip Deathball to read the book?" I suggested I hope they wouldn't mind because I was very interested in what was going to happen to Percy.

Everyone seemed to agree but Octavian seemed hesitant.

**Octavian POV **

We were still reading Percy's book. I didn't want to be the one everyone hates because I try to persuade them not to read the book.

But I saw the future, I stabbed a panda bear. A pillow pet I mean.

In the future I saw Percy Jackson. It was very vague but I could tell.

Everyone was obsessed. Especially Reyna. It looked like she was trying to sneak in a reading session every hour.

I also know that there are five books and it will take a total of two months to read them.

I can't see anything in the books or anyone's reactions. Like I said it was vague.

There was another thing that was bothering me. It was my position as praetor. I couldn't see the future that concerned me for my own benefits which was the sad thing about having the gift of prophecy.

And Reyna she was some one that I couldn't see the future to either.

I don't understand! She's the only woman I know that could resist my witty charm and my handsome good looks.

It doesn't make sense, I even winked at her.

Next time I'll try a bit more. She was just playing hard to get.

I have a feeling that she would dislike me even more if I objected to reading the book.

Reyna read again.

"**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death,"** She said.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

There were many things wrong with that statement. He said occasional, which meant more than one. And the second thing wrong with that statement was that he talked about it so casually and he was still as ignorant as a mortal. Does not even know he is a half blood yet! That fact made me want to laugh. This guy is so random! Atlas could drop the sky and he wouldn't care.

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. **

Dakota smirked. "From what I've learned—"

"We don't want to hear your life story, Dakota! WE ARE READING PERCY'S!" Hazel shouted at him.

"As I was saying," he continued "you'd be conceited to think people care about you that much."

Even I gave him a sad look.

He was talking from experience.

I laughed.

**The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

"Well he could have been more subtle about it."

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

**Almost.**

"Grover!" Reyna laughed.

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, **

We all shook our heads.

I don't know anyone who could lie worse!

**and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

**Something was going on. Something **_**had **_**happened at the museum.**

"Well Percy is a demi-god so the mist can't completely fool him." Reyna supplied.

**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

**The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. **

"I don't think he can control the weather cause' he wouldn't do that to himself. And the only person who has that much power over weather is Jupiter. So there must be something wrong" We all looked at Gwen surprised personally I didn't think that she had enough knowledge to think that deep into something.

Great now were clueless to who Percy's parent is.

That made me resent him more.

**A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. **

**One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.**

Reyna sighed. I knew what she was thinking wisdom is power, and he was letting that go.

And that just proved how close I was to her.

I am so smart!

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

**Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

" It does sound good! Now I know what to call Lupa when she makes me go to archery training!" shouted Dakota.

Bobby and Dakota argued over who would get to use the line and the both looked at Frank like he was the Ref.

"Sorry guys! I love Archery!

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick.**

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

Both Gwen and Naomi cooed in adoration, Reyna rolled her eyes at them both, Bobby was laughing at Percy for his lack of masculinity, Hazel and Frank were whispering about what would happen when they came to camp, and Dakota was drinking Kool Aid.

I was watching it all. Mostly Dakota, his obliviousness was funny.

**And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view** **of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend,** **even if he was a little strange.**

"Yeah that's right, and what are you going to do about it? Teach him to be normal?" Bobby laughed at his own joke and went ignored by the rest.

**I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

"At least he studies for the subject that matters!" Hazel input.

Reyna glared "all the subjects matter! What would you do without them? Drop your sword because it's to heavy? That's math!"

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the **_**Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology **_**across my dorm room. **

**Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon,**

Someone giggled. "There's a HUGE difference, Percy."

**or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

"What is he going do every Thursday when we only speak Latin?" Frank worried.

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

**I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. **_**I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**_

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F **

"Now is a good time to start." Hazel smiled.

Someone whispered "You mean _then?"_

**I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

**I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

**I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices **

**inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,**

_**"...**_ **worried about Percy, sir."**

"What would Grover be doing with Mr. Brunner?" Dakota asked excitedly. Everyone in the group glared at him.

**I froze.**

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper,**

**but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

**I inched closer.**

As did everyone in the group.

**"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the **_**school**_**! Now that we know for sure, and **_**they **_**know too—"**

"A Kindly One: Dirae. They know what?" Everyone stared at the book waiting for answers.

**"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

Everyone shot questioning glances at eachother. Percy was already very mature. How much more can a person get after they defeat a Dirae?

**"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line— **_**"**_

**"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

**"Sir, he **_**saw **_**her... ."**

"Grover has a point, Percy can't be that ignorant anymore."

**"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

**"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

**"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

"What does he mean again? Why would a Faun be worried about keeping a demi god alive? They are supposed to be experienced!" Reyna said her worries outloud.

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

"He heard it!"

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

"Now wouldn't that be funny if the class was full of students in detention?" The joke didn't ease the tension.

**A few seconds later I heard a slow **_**clop-clop-clop, **_**like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

**"Don't remind me."**

"Poor Faun! Humans age twice as fast so the Fauns that are looking for demi gods have to take twice the amount of them."

I didn't think that was so sad could you just make up an excuse?

Or just put "A" down on all the answers? Its not like Fauns needed to go to college.

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

**I didn't answer.**

"Yeah I just spent the whole night studying in the detention classroom! How about you? Did you have any suspicious conversations with our Latin teacher or how about Science that guy is nice and old to!" Bobby babbled cheerfully.

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just... tired."**

"Right…."

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.**

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

"Ouch. And that's just for Latin!" I said. I had an ancestry with the gods. You might not understand what I mean by that but let me put this way: all my cousins are children of Bacchus. So I never had to go to school. I just lived here my whole life.

**my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best.**

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

"Why does she even pretend she will get a first kiss?" Naomi shuddered.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

"Yeah it's only a matter of time! He should be here already!" Hazel said. Maybe she thought it was unfair that she had to be here since she six, and Percy would come when he was twelve.

**My eyes stung.**

"Embarrassing!"

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

"He could have told him he was a demi god first, then Percy would not be so sad about it."

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

" could have stopped him!"

"He could not have in front of all this kids how embarrassing would that be!"

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. **

**Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were **_**rich **_**juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"Right, except for the fact you have more power in your whole being than the president has in his whole life time!" Hazel cracked.

I just raised my eyebrows and waited for Reyna to continue.

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

"They probably thought that was a bad thing and didn't want to talk to him, Morons!"

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had,**

"That's such a coincidence!"

**so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. **

**It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

"Oh! He's afraid there are monsters on the Greyhound!" Gwen was happy to make such a revelation.

No duh!

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

Great that is going to scare him more than if they were actually there! Reyna voiced that opinion too.

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much **_**did **_**you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

Bobby snorted "You mean the whole thing?"

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

"And Percy is supposed to believe that?"

That was exactly what I was thinking: NOW Grover can lie?

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."**

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

"It is too late for lying!"

**His ears turned pink.**

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

_**Grover Underwood**_

_**Keeper**_

_**Half-Blood Hill**_

We only have one hill! It's the one separating two cohorts. The one with the most Mars children, and one with the most Minerva children. We don't even call it half blood hill! We call it 'The Hill That is the Only Reason the Camp is Not at War!'

_**Long Island, New York**_

_**(800)**_ _**009-0009**_

**"What's Half—"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."**

"I get it! The Fauns with those jobs only stay at Camp in the summer! I always wondered where Old George went!" Naomi cried.

She is so stupid.

"Umm, Naomi…. George is died." I explained.

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

"From what? He is going to ask."

**I stared at him.**

"What's punch line?"

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended **_**me.**_

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

"We all knew that was coming!" Frank admitted.

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

"Someone cut the cheese?"

Okay, that had to be the worst joke I have heard in a while.

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off.**

**Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. **

"We should he a Faun here. I love to watch them babble about the earth when no one is paying attention." Sighed Dakota.

**On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice**_**.**_

"Lunch!"

**There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

"Kay' that is random!"

But Reyna looked like she was thinking. I remember now! The Fates were retired and stayed in our city since the Big three gods took the oath not to have children, and then all of a sudden they disappeared. The oath never mattered to us because Jason had always been here, and the son of Pluto, Nico stopped in every once in a while.

That is kinda funny! The one we all expected to break the oath didn't!

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

"The Fates." Reyna told everyone who didn't already know. Then they realized what Reyna and I had just a few moments ago.

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

"With Percy's luck, They'll be looking at him." I flinched as I said it. Being a seer of the future, the fates were my rivals because they are the only ones who can change what I can see.

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

"How soon do you think he'll die? I put twenty bucks' that on the next page he'll die in a bus crash." Bobby took out the money and layed it In the center of our circle.

"Bobby, what would we do with mortal money. And more importantly, where did you get it?" I asked.

Reyna shot Bobby a look that clearly said 'we'll talk about this later.'

And I want to be there to watch that entertaining argument!

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

I rolled my eyes, only a fool would joke about something like that.

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.**

We all paled. Here I bet Percy is still laughing and smiling like it was funny. At least the Faun knew the significance behind the scissors.

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

"Getting in the bus isn't going to save him now!" Hazel shouted. It looked like she might cry.

This getting worse than I thought. Who knows how long these guy will be in depression if he dies.

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that **_**snip **_**across four lanes of traffic.**

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

Gods this kid is SO stupid!

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

"Great, nobody would notice if I kid suddenly died on the bus." Dakota probably thought all that panic would be funny. I always wondered if Dakota was a sadist. His father was good enough one already!

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

"That he is most likely going to die in twenty four hours."

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

"No, they're much harder to kill, and they can kill you with the snip of a scissors."

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

"It wards off the evil!" Gwen laughed.

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

**"What last time?"**

**"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

"Yep, that isn't going to scare Percy."

**"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

"Can't wait to hear how Grover reacts when Percy ditches him at the first chance." Bobby laughed. For some reason he was the only one who wasn't wrapped head to toe for Percy.

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

This kid catches up fast!

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

We all stared at each other. Naomi and Gwen were crying hysterically into each other's arms. Dakota, Hazel, and Frank were staring at the book in shock. And they would take a while to unfreeze I thought, last time we had to use the microwave.

But Reyna was no where to be found. That's when I heard her retching behind a tree. She didn't want anyone to see or hear that she was taking it all the worst.

They'll all be in for a surprise when Percy makes it to camp.

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><p><strong>Authors Note<strong>

**Sooo….. what do you think? Tell me if you liked Octavian's POV. I don't know how often I'll be doing it. I think I will be doing it mostly in Reyna's view and Percy's when he comes to camp. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and Favorited and Alerted this story!**

…**.**

…**.**

…**Review!**


	5. Three New Readers

….**Yeah, I kinda like that idea. When do you guys think I should bring in Percy? I think it would be cool if I brought him in Sea of Monsters, or Titans curse? At the earliest I might bring him in the part in the arch. I am getting obsessive with this story, so I am updating every 7 hours. And it takes a few hours to write one chapter!**

**Reyna's POV**

* * *

><p>"<strong>Grover Unexpectedly Loses his Pants," <strong>Naomi read slowly. I wondered if she usually read slowly or she did it because she wasn't taught to read that well.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

**I know, I know. It was rude.**

**But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"**

She still read super slow, she wasn't trying to add effect I knew she was just a very bad reader.

**Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.**

"That's what happens to me when I eat enchiladas!" Bobby referenced to the secret he told us last chapter.

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

**Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her.**

"Ahhh! That's so sad!" cried Dakota, but he quieted when he saw Bobby's look. It was known by everyone that he was dropped off here when he was 7 months old by his Aunt because his mom died in her sleep.

All Octavian did was smile cheerfully and urged Naomi to keep reading. He shot guilty glances towards the trees.

Naomi didn't continue, she might be an air head but again she wasn't a complete idiot.

"What's going on Octavian?"

"What do you mean? No one is behind that tree!"

Now Octavian is an idiot! He may do very bad predictions of the future, but he is even worse at lying!

Hazel, getting the hint went to check behind the tree. She gasped and fell back.

Frank rushed to her aid and to discover what was behind the tree.

His eyes widened, eye brows raised and he quickly pulled Hazel back.

The general area around the big, knobby tree darkened. It was hard to explain but it looked like a big shadow formed into a Hellhound with two kids riding on the back.

I must be hallucinating! There is no such thing as a tame hellhound! Or kids riding on the back of one! This is ridiculous!

I recognized them both, the first one was a teenager who, though very young didn't look like it. He was holding the collar like reins, and I knew immediately that this was Nico Diangelo. He stopped in every once in a while because he was a friend of Jason's.

Which was odd. Apparently they met on a quest when Jason was in Central Park, New York looking for the Door of Orpheus which he never did find.

But he _never_ came on a hellhound.

Behind him, holding on to the hellhounds fur and looking like this was a normal occurrence was Jade Spellman.

She was like Nico who came to Camp Jupiter every once in a while. But the difference was that she was here more often than not. When she did leave, it was usually to the Underworld. No body ever worried because she was as safe there as she was here. She had protection down there being a daughter of Trivia.

The reason none of the other children of Trivia went to the Underworld was because Jade was gifted from her mother. She was the only one in the whole camp that could do more magic than just lifting forks and boulders.

Jade had long deep black hair that reached her shoulders. She had the color hair that people envied. The black wasn't the hallow black. The black almost looked purple. It only could be described as raven. When someone describes a raven everyone thinks its black enough to be purple.

It was some what ironic that she had dark purple streaks that started from the very top of her scalp all the way to the tips of her hair. So everyone knew it was all natural.

She had warm chocolaty eyes that looked melted enough that you could sink into them, and if you looked close enough you could see little specs that were the same color of the streaks in her hair.

There were many people at Camp Jupiter that feared her. But if you were kind enough and gave her a chance you would see that she is a very nice person that has a cool sense of humor.

I was the first to recover.

"What are you guys doing here?"

Nico replied "Octavian sent for me and-"

Octavian shot him a look.

"-I mean, Octavian told us that you guys were reading a funny book."

Octavian palmed his face.

This time I was the one to glare.

"You TOLD someone! I thought we had an unspoken agreement that we wouldn't tell anyone! NO ONE!"

"It's okay Reyna we won't tell anyone! What book are you reading anyway?"

I gave Octavian an 'I'll kill you later glare' that everyone at camp cowered at.

"We're reading Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief."

Nico and Jade went into a shocked silence. I looked at Frank like he would have an explanation. He just shrugged.

"Percy Jackson—" Jade struggled out, she looked stunned.

"the LIGHTENING THIEF!" Nico looked like he wanted to die right there. "Private meeting please?"

We all turned away and gave them privacy. We made quiet conversation. I didn't join. I was secretly trying to pick up their meeting. I couldn't hear a lot and it was very muffled. I could only hear bits.

"Percy!... Of course he gets his own book…more than one….. about us?...Never….Hades or Pluto…maybe we should listen just in case."

They turned back to us. It really was an entertaining sight to see two teenagers and a hellhound huddled, I deleted that thought from my mind and went back to business.

"We've decided to stay in listen only that way we gain your trust, because I doubt you would want us back here just in case we spread the word about the book." Jade suggested.

I was about to add, are you sure that isn't the only reason? But I knew that they were hiding something. They would tell me when they were ready.

"Okay, you haven't missed much" Hazel began.

Nico sat reluctantly next to Dakota, and Jade next to Gwen. I noticed they did this that way they were still side by side.

**She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because **_**it **_**makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

That made me wonder. Could it be? No, it could have been a minor god who was an enemy of him.

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. **

**She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

"That takes guts, from what we've heard about Percy." Frank said wide eyed.

I looked over at Jade and Nico. They just calmly listened to the book, and didn't interrupt. I think that they just need some time to get comfortable.

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. **

**When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

That made everyone smile except Dakota. When everyone gave him a questioning look he just explained he was still trying to get the pizza wrapped in gym shorts out from under his bed. Remind me to save his poor cohort.

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies.**.

**The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

Naomi and Gwen wrinkled their noses. After this I bet they were going to clean their Cohort until the carpet sparkled.

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

"That's what he first asks him when his step son comes home? Friendly guy!" Bobby added in sarcasm.

**That was it. No **_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_

Again Bobby smiled knowingly.

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

Naomi started praying to her mother. All I caught was her saying 'Venus help us all.'

**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. **

**He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. **

"He could be a son of Bacchus is disguise. Except beer instead of wine. And Bacchus has some sort of pride." Dakota shot Hazel a disgusted look.

He was probably thinking 'How could that toe rag be a son of the great Bacchus?'

**Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. **

**He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

Like Gabe could do that if he tried. Never anger a demi god. It always comes back at you in the end.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

Lie better! Maybe it's a good thing, no one wants another son of Mercury.

**He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

Whoah!

"It's like magic!"

That was the first time Jade showed emotion, and she wasn't happy. She glared at Frank.

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

Sympathy! Rriigghhtt!

**"Am I **_**right**_**?**_**" **_**Gabe repeated.**

Ummmm… No.

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

Hazel, Gwen, and I started gagging in harmony. Naomi was hyperventilating on the floor. Jade's eyes were squeezed shut and she was rocking back and forth shuddering. The guys were looking at us like 'what's the problem?'

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. **

It was probably full of Gabe's crap.

**During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

Knew it!

**I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

Kind of.

**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds,** **or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

Nico and Jade flinched.

**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. **

" He shouldn't of ditched him at the station." I said.

**A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

**Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

"Thank gods!" Octavian cried. That jerk! Why should he care about Percy's well being when he endangered it by bringing outsiders! Wait, calm down Reyna it's just a book.

The way Nico and Jade looked at it, I suspect there's something more.

**She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

**My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.**

Nico smiled as if he had witnessed it before.

**Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

Everyone sighed.

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

All the guys smirked. But I thought It was sweet.

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

At this all the guys all the guys grinned. But I thought it was even sweeter that he even cared.

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

Cue Gabe, of course he can't go long with being unnoticed.

**I gritted my teeth.**

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

"A nice millionaire too." Nico added.

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. **

**I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

**Until that trip to the museum ...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

Tell her, I urged him. The others leaned towards the book as if thinking the same thing.

**"No, Mom."**

**I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

What?

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

"JUST PUNCH HIM ALREADY!" Dakota shouted.

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, **

**"Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

What a jerk! What _does_ he do for them?

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

Nico was the first to laugh and we all joined in.

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

Sarcasm? Bobby choked on laughter.

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

**He went back to his game.**

Thank you gods, before he made more damage.

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

Please don't convince yourself you imagined it.

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken.**

Of course! Why does he do that!

**She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

He cares more about his car than about his wife? Why shouldn't I be surprised?

**"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

Will Percy be the one driving?

**Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

That was funny, not Gabe, but a twelve year old driving. And kind of ironic.

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe.**

He is bad enough to be evil. I wonder what will happen.

**The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

I raised my eyebrows. That means Gabe is pretty evil for the sign to work. And I also realized that Percy did the 'Maybe I imagined it' thing again. That is sooo annoying!

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,** **and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

Confusing. But I'd bet he'd like any place away from Gabe. But that place must hold a special meaning to them.

**I loved the place.**

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

His dad? ...

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

The sea? It can't be no, the oath…. It can't be.

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

What is with the blue food! Gosh, these people are obsessive!

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. **

**But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

Hallelujah! I thought they were all crazy! For the blue food and for putting up with Gabe!

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

She wanted to be an author. Inspiring!

Someone saw the look on my face and snorted.

"What?"

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

I've never seen a god other than Mercury and Venus so I couldn't tell which was his father. And none of the kids at camp had that combo on appearance. Yeah, most of the Trivia children had black hair but none of them had bright colored eyes like blue or green. Most of them had brown and black, with specs of dark blue and purple. But never mind that, Trivia is a girl Goddess.

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

"You'd be surprised what there is about him to be proud of." Jade blurted. Nico mouthed 'Shut up!' at her.

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

Maybe his father contacted him, once when he was little that way Percy had something to remember him by. Even though that was illegal to all gods and goddesses.

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

You and every other demi god in the world.

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

Oh no. This lady was smart, that's not the reason. She knows. If only she would tell him and we would learn who his father is.

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I **_**have **_**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

"And it's something to be proud of!" Hazel laughed.

"Yeah, do you think I would be this beautiful if my mom wasn't Venus?" Naomi implored. Someone should replace her mirrors with windows.

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

**"Safe from what?"**

Every monster that wants to destroy a demigods.

"Yes, now she's getting to the point where she should bring him here!" Gwen cried happily.

"Where ever she's going to bring him, I don't think it will be here." Said Octavian darkly.

Both Nico and Jade gulped when they thought no one was watching.

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

"Creepy, why would a Cyclops stalk him?" laughed Frank. He probably thought this was hilarious.

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

I read something about Heracles doing that once.

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. **

**But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

That's a bit selfish of him. Little does he know that will put his life at stake!

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

Everyone beamed.

"Yay! He's coming here! Maybe this is happening at this exact moment. So when we end the chapter he will arrive!" said Gwen.

Jade looked irritated with how stupid Gwen was. Though a nice person would call it aloofness.

"No, Gwen. Think about it. If that were true, Percy is or would be at the other coast. And it would take a few days to travel from there to here."

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."**

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

Jupiter and Neptune were fighting. They got into fights all the time, but this seemed different. More important.

**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, **_**No!**_

Most half blood dreams were prophetic. Or happening at that exact moment. I don't know which was better.

**I woke with a start.**

**Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."**

**I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

**Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

"How'd he find them? And let me guess, you can see his goat legs?" asked Hazel.

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

It was pretty obvious now, she knew.

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

_**"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" **_**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you **_**tell **_**her?"**

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—**

**and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...**

"We know fur and hooves. Get to the point already!" you'd think for someone who could see the future, they wouldn't be so impatient. Octavian was.

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: **_**"Percy. **_**Tell me **_**now**_**!"**

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. **_**Go**_**!**_**"**_

At least _she _knew the severity of the situation!

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

"No duh!"

* * *

><p><strong>I need to answer some questions. <strong>

**That is kinda funny! The one we all expected to break the oath didn't!"-Who is**  
><strong>this about? Jupiter, Neptune, or Pluto?<strong>

**So, Jason is a son of Jupiter, Nico is (to them) a son of Pluto. And like I said in my very first Author's Note, Hazel to me is a daughter of Apollo, because that's how I saw her before Son of Neptune came out.**

**I needed the fauns to do the same job as satyrs that way they won't realize there is a Greek camp until the very last moment. I know that this is off plot but like I said, this is a slightly AU story, very mild.**

**- Another question-**

**Wouldn't Reyna know Percy and Annabeth from Circe's island?**

**She doesn't recognize Percy until Annabeth is mentioned, just because I think that she would notice that he isn't a terrible person in the beginning it doesn't mean he was a terrible person then either.**

**One last thing. If any of you are upset that Octavian isn't in this chapter much, that is a false observation. He was the one who told the 'secret', and therefore is the highlight of the chapter. And since it was his POV last ch. I thought I should give him a break.**

**A few things to review about.**

~When do you think I should bring Percy in?

I think it would be cool if I brought him in, in the Sea of Monsters. That way the readers can fully absorb his accomplishments. But I am impatient, so maybe I'll bring him in, in a later chapter.

~Who's point of view do you think The Mark of Athena will be from?

I hope Percy's again, but I highly doubt it.

I don't joke when I say it!...

Review!


	6. My Mother Teaches me Bullfighting

**Do you realize how exhausting writing all these chapters are. When I am writing it I want to be doing something else. When I am doing something else I am think of ways I can sneak back to doing it. And let me tell you about sleeping! I don't want to go to sleep because all I want to do is type the story! But all the feedback makes it worth it… Hint, hint! **

**Reyna's POV**

* * *

><p>Nico, Jade and the hellhound have been at Camp Jupiter for three days. Lupa has made us make up our training time from when we were reading the book. And the rest of the time Nico and Jade were telling us about their adventures in the underworld.<p>

There were many awkward moments of course when we all felt like they were holding something back but in private, Bobby, Hazel, Frank, Dakota, Octavian (whom I was still angry at) Gwen and I ( I didn't count Naomi because she was painting her nails.) agreed that if and when they were comfortable telling us they would.

One particularly odd moment of tension came up when I started asking about the hellhound.

"So… Nico, Jade. Tell us about the hound? It's kind of an unusual form of transportation right?"

They both hesitated before Nico answered.

"Erm… Well, her name is Mrs.O'leary. And her owner died and passed it on to someone else."

I was confused. "Then why are you with her?" It's not like traveling by hellhound was their only transportation.

This time Jade made an answer. "Well that owner kinda disappeared to. So whoever needed her or wanted to look after her could. We were both in the Underworld when we were summoned, so we met and I had Mrs.O'Leary for one of my mother's quests, and so she helped us."

They both looked decided that they wouldn't say anymore so I subtly changed the topic.

"What was the quest? Does it matter to Lady Trivia that it was abandoned?"

-End of Flashback-

So once again we were gathered in the small clearing surrounded by trees in the woods. Only this time we all brought pillows.

Octavian brought a mound of pillow pets to. He got them for free because it was part of his job.

He wouldn't let any of us touch them or use them, only he could stab them when he needed to. It was so sad to watch their fur tear and stuffing fly out like candy out of a piñata.

I bet he didn't see anything. He just got enjoyment in killing them. For some reason he really liked stabbing the pandas. Pillow pets I mean.

Jade volunteered reading the next chapter. I got the feeling she read ahead, and liked to know important thing in the book before we did.

"**My Mother Teaches me Bullfighting." **Started Jade mysteriously. Maybe being a daughter of Trivia everything sounded mysterious when she said it was a trait? I wasn't sure.

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

"And where did he think Grover got it? The shag clothing store?" Nico guffawed.

**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

"You know how Fauns get when we mention any kind of zoos! It's all about animal rights to them!" Hazel said while rolling her eyes.

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"**

"Now that would be funny! Don't you guys feel like Percy's implying something?" asked Dakota.

Octavian was the only one laughing. While Naomi and Gwen looked the ones most utterly revolted.

That was weird, since they are daughters of Venus shouldn't they be the ones gung ho about any kind of love? Oh my GODS, what am I thinking!

**Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

**"Watching me?"**

"Great! Now he's going to think all Fauns are along the lines of being stalkers! Which I will tell you is very creepy! When I went to the college library I swear there was one watching me from behind the other shelf!" Finally I could share that with someone. It had been bothering me all week.

"Yep, that's Darren. He was following me on my way to The Flame. You know that restaurant with the good chicken? Oh no that's embarrassing! He probably knew I was going to order It and stole the chicken to save a life! That's why that waiter gave me tofu instead!" Bobby had a look of shame on his face.

We seem to be having a lot of awkward moments this week.

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I **_**am **_**your friend."**

**"Urn ... what **_**are **_**you, exactly?"**

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

"He won't like that!" Octavian snickered.

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty **_**"Blaa-ha-ha!"**_

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

**"Goat!" he cried.**

**"What?"**

**"I'm a **_**goat **_**from the waist down."**

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

"Hypocrite!" a bunch of people from the group yelled. We all laughed, except for Gwen. I knew she was about to ask what a hypocrite is.

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_ **There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

Satyrs? What world was he from?

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a **_**myth, **_**Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

**"So you **_**admit **_**there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

Most of the people reading were beyond exasperated, as was I. But in an amused way. Wow, those to could get sidetracked!

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

Psychic abilities, huh?

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

"That's not going to help! Grover'll just get him more confused! Answer the main question before the details!" I was frustrated. For some demigods watching as they realized it was funnier than watching our unicorns try licking peanut butter off their horns. So of course I wanted to hear about his reaction real bad!

The others were giving me a look that said 'please get Reyna some of that _special _nectar, she's gone towards the loony end.'

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

Did the book ever say what was chasing them?

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. **

Most of us rolled our eyes.

"Just get over it!" Naomi exclaimed. Maybe she wanted to hear his reaction too.

**"Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

"And that's the mild way of putting it!" Nico laughed.

"There's nothing funny about it, their talons are sharp!" Jade painted a hurt look on her face. I was about to ask how she knew that, but then she continued to book.

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

"Weird trait, but useful. To be calm in the worst situations…" Hazel seemed to be dozing into la-la land.

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

"And was that your imagination when you slayed , or met the Cyclops stalker, or killed the snake in your crib as a baby? I think not!" It was weird how just because Octavian could see the future, he used phrases like 'I think not'.

"Dude… How would you know that? Have you met Percy?" Frank grinned, he liked talking back to Octavian.

Nobody noticed when Nico and Jade exchanged evil smirks.

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

Maybe this was a safe haven for demigods who had no means of transportation when they were on the other coast? But then why have we never heard of it. Maybe Lupa was afraid to split our divisions. As they say 'Weak divided' and that was a policy of Rome. Teamwork wins.

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

"You guys, something isn't right, here." I said. My eyes unfocused as I thought real hard about what was going on, but couldn't come up with any conclusions.

"You don't say, Sherlock?" Jade rolled her eyes in amusement. What did she know that I didn't?

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

"Yarn!" I scoffed. "More like your strand of life!"

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

"Who bets Percy doesn't catch that last bit!" Bobby called.

Everyone ignored him and silently pleaded Jade to keep reading.

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

We all laughed. He was under analyzing the consequences of his actions.

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

**"You meant 'you.' As in **_**me.**_**"**

**"I meant **_**you, **_**like 'someone.' Not you, **_**you.**_**"**

Nico rolled his eyes, (which we all seem to be doing a lot of) "Typical."

What the heck does he mean by that?

**"Boys!" my mom said.**

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

**"What was that?" I asked.**

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

"Almost where!" Dakota shouted. Finally someone other than me was the one getting restless.

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

**I didn't know where **_**there **_**was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

Hey, it's no piece of pie here either, buddy.

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really **_**hadn't **_**been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

We all face palmed, now he understands? Com'on! Way to live in the moment!

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling **_**boom!, **_**and our car exploded.**

We all jumped, even though Jade said it relatively calmly. I was frozen in horror, but everyone else leaned away from their pillows, towards Jade, willing her with their minds.

**I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

Once again we all jumped, but not from what was happening in the book, but from the loud ripping noise that had just seconds ago echoed throughout the clearing.

We all turned around to see Octavian with a large copper knife held high above his head with the large brown blade facing downwards. I would be telling cutting the honest truth short if I said he looked like he was having the time of his life with the poor teddy bear that was now a pile of stuffing in the grass.

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

**"I'm okay..."**

"Yeah, that is what we are worried about, whether or not you're okay." Bobby laughed. And he remained the only one laughing.

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead.**

"That's a good way to wake up in the morning!" chirped Gwen.

Naomi looked on admiringly even though the statement made absolutely no sense. She didn't get it.

I tried to cast my unbelieving gaze away from her.

**The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

**Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"**

We all stilled.

"Is he dead?" Dakota asked dubiously.

I decided to answer with a doubtful cough.

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

"It's so refreshing to hear the innocence of undying loyalty." Gwen sighed dramatically. She probably learned what those words meant to impress everyone.

"Looks like someone has been reading the dictionary in their free time. Even Reyna doesn't do that!" Bobby laughed.

Ummm, thanks. Was that supposed to be a compliment?

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

We all laughed. And Dakota accidentally spit a mouthful of cherry red Kool Aid at the decreased mountain of stuffed animals.

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. **

"What can be worse than the fates?" Hazel mumbled to herself. At least she was trying not to ruin the book with her comments.

**It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

"I've never heard of a monster like that before, what…." I trailed off and waited for Jade to carry on reading. Well, my questions aren't going to be answered with me talking to myself.

**I swallowed hard. "Who is—"**

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too.**

We all cringed, waiting for the monster to step on them with his foot.

**I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

_**"What?"**_

Many of us yelled the same thing, including me. All I could think was, was this really the time to be taking pictures for your Christmas cards?

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

How ironic. I snorted out loud.

People looked at me funny again, and Nico flashed Dakota a expression that said _It's time. _Then Dakota slid a bottle of his favorite blue Kool Aid with a solemn look on his face.

The look on his face made mine burn red.

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

"That's how they get killed." Laughed Jade. How could she be laughing at this point. Not only that but how was it that both Jade and Nico were oblivious to the tension. The were sitting back in their pillows at ease without a care in the world.

Why weren't we noticing the real problem here! Our camp is in California, not New York! Jade interrupted my thoughts by continuing with the story.

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

**"No!" I shouted. "You **_**are **_**coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

Bobby shook his head. "He had so much potential. Why do all the good ones die? Percy, I mean, not Grover."

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he **_**couldn't **_**be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket.**

"Yes there is! Isn't it obvious he'd need the blanket to kill you!" Dakota shouted and relished on the sarcasm.

Before Jade continued she laughed and shook her head at the sky, as if asking the gods, why did you bring me here?

**Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns …**

Oh. My. Gods. "The minotaur! You guys, this is bad!" everyone was hit by the severity of the situation. And at least no one laughed and said 'of couse this is bad, captain obvious!' .

What struck me weird though, was that when everyone was urging Jade to continue, she didn't look the least bit surprised.

**"He doesn't want **_**us**_**," my mother told me. "He wants **_**you. **_**Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

**I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat,**

Bet Grover wouldn't be happy that, out of all the titles he gets, he gets the one stating that he's a goat.

**at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

The minotaur IS half bull stupid! Wait, this kid is starting to sound familiar…

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

"Do you people think that Percy is stubborn or stupid?" Asked Hazel, looks like she was thinking the same thing too.

"Stupid." Nico inserted immediately after he said it, as if this is what he thought about a lot.

"Heroic." Naomi said this dreamily. Oh gods, help us now! Looks like Naomi has an new infatuation again. Last time it was Robert Pattinson, and she'd dress up in in sweatshirts and moan about wanting to be a vampire. I think she was pretending to be Bell or Bella, what ever her name is.

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

Awkward, he needs his mom to help him carry a satyr who usually are super light? Wait, sorry I forgot he hasn't had seven years of deluxe war training yet, my bad.

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of **_**Muscle Man **_**magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear—**

"Gross!" We all squealed.

**I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

"I heard that they only get a haircut every eon." Gwen said in her gossipy voice. We all ignored her.

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

After several moments of laughing Bobby gasped, "This is going to be one interesting book!"

Octavian, angry that the story had been interrupted, kicked the remaining stuffed animals at Bobby. Pretty soon, it was a full fledged war, without the weapons and combat. Jade silenced everyone by reading.

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

"This is your new life, kid. Get used to it." Octavian snarled. What is wrong with him. Geez!

I retorted. "You know, that this book wasn't written last week, so if Percy lives past this book and far beyond, he'd be our age."

That shut him up!

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.  
><strong>

Seriously, who cares who his mother is. As long as Percy doesn't say the real name!

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

**"But he's the Min—"**

_Idiot, _I wanted to shout.

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

**I glanced behind me again.**

"Idiot! When you glance back, usually it hits you in the face!" This time I did shout.

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

"He's blind, so he uses his extra good sense of smell." Nico explained to the few of us who didn't know.

**"Food?" Grover moaned.**

"SHUT UP, GROVER!" Frank shouted. He'd been silent this whole time. Probably because he wanted to get on with the story too.

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

And where on earth did his MORTAL mom know all this?

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. **

**He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

"Uh oh!" Bobby laughed.

_**Not a scratch, **_**I remembered Gabe saying.**

In times of peril Percy remembers the stupidest things. Next thing you know he'll probably lose his focus and say 'Oops!' Then he will die and the book will say, The End. There's a book to read your kids, Mercury will tell us, 'A wandering eye always dies.' Then he'll laugh manically.

**Oops.**

Maybe I could replace Octavian and become an oracle.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

Did his mom go here?

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

"RUN, RUN, RUN!" screamed Frank. Great it was '09s championship chariot race all over again.

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

Please listen to her.

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

We all gagged.

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

Why did Lord Mercury give this to us again? I was going to murder him! Wish I could…

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

I slammed my face into my pillow. Listening to this twelve year old by get killed was torture.

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

More graves for them to dig, I thought this mournfully.

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

"We know that already! Get to the point!" Somebody shouted. I couldn't tell who, because I was on the verge of crying into my pillow. I felt a hand on my back. Knowing my suspicions were correct, I shook it off.

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

Did she die?

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ... gone.**

"She can't be dead! There'd be blood!" I spouted trying to reassure myself.

"It's ok, calm down. Everything will be fine." Nico helped me. Little did I know he meant it literally.

**"No!"**

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

"That's the gift of ADHD." Hazel said simply.

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

Know he won't, I thought tiredly. When will the drama end?

**I couldn't allow that.**

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

"How is that going to help hypothermia?" I shouted. I was getting dizzy. So tired, when would it end?

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

"Now, not only does he want to die, he wants to die in the most painful way possible!" Dakota choked between laughter. This was a trait of Bacchus, to think that pain and death was funny.

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

"Usually those are the spur of the moment ideas." Naomi told Gwen. How would she know?

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

**But it didn't happen like that.**

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

"Whoa! That can't be possible!" Bobby yelled.

"Jealous much?" Nico said considerably light hearted.

I heard Jade mutter something about boys being insufferable.

**How did I do that?**

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

Looks like the Minotaur's manners were down in Tartaus with the other half of his brains.

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

That'll knock him out for a few days!

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

Again! I know he is conscious enough to know what kind of circumstances he was living on!

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light,**

And the ADHD will kick in again.

**and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

ADHD can't do that! This guy must be unconquerable!

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

**The monster charged.**

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

**The monster was gone.**

Unbelievable! He defeated the Minotaur and a Dirae without being trained at all! Without knowing he's a demigod! How many fully trained professionals have done that and been killed? Oh yeah, A LOT!

Everyone was thinking it, but couldn't say it because they were too busy trying to pick up their jaws off the ground.

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open.**

"It must be! You just defeated the most famous monster of all time with it's own horn! " because I was the first to recover it was I who said it. And as usual everyone laughed.

**I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

How could I crack a joke when such a young hero was in so much pain? I will punish myself later.

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

Yep, he was definitely delirious!

**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

Annabeth? The one? She knew he was the one just by looking at him? Maybe I am misinterpreting things.

I was about to ask what everyone else thought, but noticed they were fast asleep.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**

**It's ok the ending is nothing evil.**

**The suggestion about bringing Thalia and Annabeth in, this is an AU story, but I want it to be as realistic as possible. So maybe if I even get to Lost Hero I will just merge it all. But I am only on the Lightning Theif, so let's not get too ahead of ourselves. ** **And who's to say that you won't get bored of it all by Titan's Curse? Review, pretty please!**


	7. The Nightmare

**Hey! This is a new chapter, duh! Once again most of my Author's Note will be at the bottom to answer some questions. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!**

**Reyna's POV**

* * *

><p>I was the last to fall asleep and the first to wake up. Weird isn't it? How I should be the one in this hundred year sleep, and yet I am the one most compelled to read.<p>

I had to do double the work, because I had many duties as praetor. I still had to organize all the events and cohorts schedules, alliances, and chores. Then they all came to me complaining and I had to restart all from scratch trying to fit in all their needs. It was so annoying how they all wanted the opposite of what another cohort wanted. So either way someone was unhappy.

Especially me! Oh dear, I am ranting again aren't I? I'd like to see how they all handle this job! In my subconscious I knew I was falling asleep but I kept on ranting.

Pretty soon I stopped ranting and I was drifting into a dream. It was a normal nightmare for me, but anything but normal to the other demigods. In my nightmares, I also relive my darkest memories.

I was back on the island. Circe's, my only known home. My mother had been pregnant with me and my sister when she got here. She was seeking shelter. From what? Circe never told us. I had been raised on that island, and been trained here with my mom, Bellona. After it all happened I had no idea where she went. I still don't. But since gods and goddesses don't die, ever only fade I had the benefit of doubt.

I am positive that mom didn't fade because war is a very big aspect in the world today. But I still don't know where she is.

Enough of that, back to the moment when the green eyed, black haired boy, and gray eyed, blonde haired girl destroyed my home.

I remember pirates running out of the main plaza, and I who was eating barbecue at the luau getting cut by their swords. I had no idea what they were saying! Maybe it was German they were speaking? I think they were asking me where their ship was.

Finally, I thought! As I pointed to the oldest ship in the gulf, the boy and girl came running out of the plaza in the same fashion that the pirates had. Except they didn't stop, they ran strait towards the ship I was pointed at.

The pirates chased them. I made my escape. My sister was yelling words that I couln't make out. All I know was that I was supposed to get in the helicopter.

My sister didn't come at first, she was looking for Mom and Aunt Circe. She could find neither.

As we flew over the island I saw mom. I smiled and motioned to go further down. Before we could, the whole island blew up.

It had been a long journey to make it to camp Jupiter, and was very hard.

It broke my heart to listen to my sister cry every night, so I remembered the reason this travesty was placed upon us. The black haired boy and gray eyed girl. The only real close glimpse I had gotten of either was the last piercing look when me and the startling green eyed boy made I contact. I won't forget. Speaking of which, that does sound a lot like the description of Percy!

Then I woke.

I had to laugh at myself for being so dramatic. There was no possible way that they were the same people! I mean, Percy was destined to die! I thought about the dream before we started the book. The other campers were starting to look at me funny so I handed the book to Octavian. Maybe if he reads he'll make fewer interruptions!

So he started the next chapter that kinda had a weird name. Of course, I was just learning that all of this guy's chapters had crazy names!

"**I Play Pinochle With a Horse,"**

"Pinochle? I'm game!" Bobby pulled out his wallet.

"What is pinochle? And how in Pluto do you know what is is?" Frank asked.

"It's gambling!" Bobby looked at us as if WE were the freaks.

"And how do you know it?" Hazel said incredulously.

"Remember that day I needed some money for that muffin?"

Everyone nodded and looked confused.

"That day, Dan, that faun, and I played ten rounds on the corner of Caesar Avenue next to the University Library. Unfortunately his magic cards weren't working and I kept playing till' I was broke?"

"Magic cards?" Naomi scoffed.

"Yeah, he said they'd guarantee that I'd win."

"When you didn't win the first time why didn't you quit?" I sighed, exasperated. Why did we invite him into the group?

"Oops." No duh!

I almost laughed cruelly in his face at his stupidity.

"Bobby! You idiot! Fauns are beggars! They beg for a reason, they're broke too!" I was at the point of being hysterical. Why couldn't everyone have the wits of Minerva?

"Can we keep reading please? Are we going to be alive by the time this book ends?" Octavian said. He didn't wait for any of us to reply before continuing.

**I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.**

Hybrids! Grover would be mad at him in the morning.

**I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. **

"Yep, that's always the alternative for demigods!" Gwen said. Like she would know! That daughter of Venus has never been in combat.

**I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blond hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.**

It could be. No I shouldn't be worried every time a black haired boy met a blonde girl. It'd be ridiculous! Now if she had gray eyes I should be horrified. But it never said anything of such. I am just overreacting.

**When she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"**

"Wasn't that what Grover and mentioned when Percy was evesdropping?" Hazel asked.

She cowered at all the angry looks she had got.

**I managed to croak, "What?"**

**She looked around, as if afraid someone would over hear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"**

**"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."**

**Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.**

"What, was she thinking he was going to shout out the answer about the stolen thing and everyone would hear?" Jade asked disbelievingly. Wasn't she the one holding all the answers? Why was she asking questions?

**The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.**

She (probably) had a life too, ya know!

**A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes- at least a dozen of them- on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.**

"Isn't that one of Lady Juno's creations?" Octavian asked. He interrupted his own reading! Who cares whose servant it is! Get on with the book! Nico tried snagging the book from him, but he held on tight and kept on reading.

**When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to.**

"Let's hope so! California is way better than New York!" boasted Naomi. None of us had never been allowed to go to New York. So none of us could prove it. But Nico could. So could Jade, but Nico could get there faster with shadow travel. I'll have to ask that to him later.

**I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance.**

"That doesn't sound like Camp Jupiter, in California." Naomi looked around confused.

I know it wouldn't be nice but I felt like shouting at her, 'You're the reason Venus's children were stereotyped as stupid!'

Instead I answered her "That's because it isn't. We're trying to figure out where he is and what's he doing there."

"Ohhhhh."

I almost bit my arm off trying not to shout at her.

Octavian coughed and waited for us to come back to earth. Everyone was looking uneasily between us waiting for me to blow.

They were smart and remained quiet. Naomi, true to my observations was still sitting on her pillow, humming and staring at the sky.

I punched my pillow so hard fluff came out.

Bobby muttered something that sounded awfully like 'Yes officer, I'd like to report cushion abuse,'

**On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.**

"Nectar." We all sighed. On cue the nymphs came and gave us tall glasses almost exactly like Percy's.

**My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.**

**"Careful," a familiar voice said.**

**Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week.**

**Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover, Not the goat boy.**

"Do you guys think that there's another camp in New York?"  
>I asked everyone.<p>

"Yeahhh, maybe that's why we weren't allowed there." Mumbled Hazel in deep thought.

"But it wouldn't be Roman would it?" Asked Gwen. She, like everyone else appeared to be, was trying to cram the to big puzzle piece in the to small hole.

"Why don't we start reading?" Asked Nico subtly.

"Noooo. I am still trying to work it out…" said Octavian airily.

"YES, you aren't going to find out by yourself. And maybe, now come on use your tiny brain with me, maybe the book will tell you. How does that sound?" Jade barked angrily. That snapped us all out of our deeply pensive states.

Both Dakota and Bobby, who hadn't spoken in a while, laughed nervously.

**So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And...**

Why does he do that? It will only make the truth come back twice as hard!

**"You saved my life," Grover said. "I... well, the least I could do ... I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."**

**Reverently, he placed the shoe box in my lap.**

**Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.**

"Yep, it's a real bummer when you find out a nightmare is reality." Frank blurted.

**"The Minotaur," I said.**

"Did Percy even listen to his mom? Names have power." I scolded the other people reading instead of Percy. No one was listening. They were still reading the book intently.

**"Urm, Percy, it isn't a good idea-"**

**"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" I demanded. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."**

"Do you guys think that it could be a Greek Camp? They never talk about the Roman stuff only Greek." I asked. I know it sounded ridiculous but the more I thought about it the more it sounded possible.

"Impossible, when Greece fell Rome took over." Said Dakota. This is the first time I've heard him sound authoritive. He signaled that this discussion was closed but I wasn't giving up.

"But when Greece fell, Rome took over. Then Rome fell—"

Everyone winced. What did they think that Rome never fell and we were there instead of the USA?

"And that's how Western Civilization began." I explained. Everyone looked at me like I was speaking Greek, which was a bad thing, and shuddered away from me like I was contagious.

It's payback time when I learn I am right. And a daughter of Bellona is always right. I've never been wrong, why don't they believe me now?

Then I remembered that old quote, "People see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear." That means that they all have to have it spelled out to them and proven by several different sources before they accept the truth they don't want to believe. Trust me! I don't want to believe it either!

**Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"**

**"My mom. Is she really ..."**

**He looked down.**

**I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.**

**My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.**

No need to be all pessimistic! My mom's gone too! I have no idea who my dad is, like him! Look where I am today! Oh yeah, lonely.

**"I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm- I'm the worst satyr in the world."**

**He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.**

**"Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.**

**Thunder rolled across the clear sky.**

**As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that settles it.**

**Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I'd find tiny horns on his head.**

That settles it. I am 2,000% positive that I am correct. Satyrs are greek and so is the River Styx.

**But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even Minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.**

"Does he believe that she died that way? There'd be way more blood than that. You can't kill a mortal that way." Once again, when I expected Jade to know everything, she didn't. You can't overestimate a person, I thought to myself. She is a powerful demigod, not Lady Minerva.

**I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with ... Smelly Gabe?**

Kind of knowing him, that would happen when the Underworld froze over.

**No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the army. I'd do something.**

**Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid- poor goat, satyr, whatever- looked as if he expected to be hit.**

"Well he let the mom die, didn't he? Is he weak? He let a wortheless mortal die and is afraid of being punished!" Octavian crowed in laughter.

No one else was laughing, and most shot him nasty looks.

"Grover tried his best, the mom isn't died, and who said satyrs had to be brave?" I retorted all at once.

**I said, "It wasn't your fault."**

Great persuasion, Percy!

**"Yes, it was. I was supposed to **_**protect **_**you."**

**"Did my mother ask you to protect me?"**

**"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least... I was."**

**"But why ..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.**

"Drink the nectar before Grover steals it!" Naomi told the book hurriedly. Why, Grover can't drink it without burning up?

**"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.**

**I recoiled at the taste,**

"He was probably expecting apple juice!" smiled Hazel.

**because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies.**

"Yum!" Said Gwen.

**And not just any cookies- my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.**

Bobby snorted. 'How manly!' he must be thinking.

**Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.**

**"Was it good?" Grover asked.**

**I nodded.**

**"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.**

**"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."**

"How would you like to be offered death in a glass?" asked Frank in his best used car dealer voice.

**His eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just... wondered."**

"Poor satyr, let's hope he doesn't give into the temptation." Laughed Jade. As if she doesn't already know… somehow. I am being paranoid! A) Jade is Roman, contrasting to whatever Grover, Percy, and Blondie named Annabeth are. B) Even if she was there, the book clearly stated that Grover and Percy were talking privately. Way to work up over nothing Reyna!

**"Chocolate-chip cookies," I said. "My mom's. Home made."**

Does he really think that his mom blended cookie dough, and disguised it as apple juice just for him before he got there?

**He sighed. "And how do you feel?"**

**"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."**

**"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff"**

**"What do you mean?"**

"How many times is he going to make Reyna repeat it in her head?" Dakota sigh echoed around the clearing. So did the group's laugh. Except for mine, like any regular person, I just blushed furiously.

**He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."**

"Mr.D? Chiron—"

**The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.**

**My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn't going to let it go.**

Getting addicted to an inanimate object? Fine by me!

"Materialism is bad," Rebecca said philosophically.

**As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.**

**We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. **

Just as Naomi was about to ask a question I kicked her into a tree. Yes, she was sitting, that just goes to show how strong I am. To Naomi: Yes we know that isn't Camp Jupiter, do you expect us to know?

**The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture",**

"Oh Gods…" whispered everyone smart enough to listen to the book. We all knew what was coming (just the same that I predicted.) and didn't like it.

**an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena" except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball.**

**Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.**

"They get Pegasus's? Only Reyna gets one. Lucky camp. All we get are unicorns. And if we try to ride them we get kitchen duty every meal for two weeks." Bobby whined. We all were guessing on the 'they'.

**Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who'd spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.**

**The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels- what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs.**

Baby angels… weren't they supposed to be cute?

**That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.**

We all exclaimed in recognition. What was he doing at their camp? Maybe that's why the Romans haven't spotted Bacchus for decades. That is if their Greek and Roman forms could be in two places at once.

**He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my stepfather.**

**"That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody.**

I don't know how the Greek camp works, but does that make her leader or something?

**And you already know Chiron..."**

**He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.**

It finally made sense! "Oh you guys Chiron is !" I cried.

"How do you know that?" asked Gwen incredulously.

"Chiron is a centaur and Percy heard clopping when he was eavesdropping…"

"ohhh…" breathed the whole group together.

**First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.**

**"Mr. Brunner!" I cried.**

"I told you." I smirked.

Someone in the crowd whispered "shut it!"

**The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers **_**B**_**.**

We all laughed out loud.

**"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle."**

Bobby grinned with pleasure.

"Bobby, why do you still like the game if you lost ten games to a broke satyr?"

"This isn't something I'll be going into detail about, but Dan and I had some good times playing pinochle!"

He left us all wondering what he meant by that. But not me. I was hung up on the way he said it plural. HE LOST MORE THAN ON ONE OCCASION?

**He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."**

"That's my dad." Dakota grinned proudly. We couldn't insult him now, or else Dakota would turn anything we were going to drink into Cherry Kool Aid and added with a few extra tablespoons of sugar, which would make most campers gag, but was Dakota's specialty.

**"Uh, thanks." I scooted a little farther away from him because, **_**if **_**there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice.**

"It doesn't have to be adults, when I first met Reyna, that was my tatic too." Frank said. He had only gotten here a few weeks ago. I scowled.

Did people really think of me that way? I thought that everyone would want a responsible praetor. Half the camp didn't know me before I was praetor, so they wouldn't know who that girl really (me) really is. On a morbid note, the half that does know the real me is dead.

**If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.**

"Can you blame hime? He is the god of wine!" Nico laughed. Everyone who wasn't a fan of Bacchus glared at Nico for standing up for him. It was the majority. The only one who wasn't was Dakota, he was drinking Cherry Kool Aid.

**"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl.**

**She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now."**

Cabin Eleven, Mercury naturally. But his Greek form is…

**Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron."**

**She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking.**

"Because you haven't had any training silly! And she's had the most training in the whole camp!" Naomi flipped her hair, and fluttered her eyelashes, while rolling her eyes at the same time.

Can we get rid of her soon? I am sure Gwen wouldn't mind.

**With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, **

Stereo types. Always wrong. Trust me, some people are under the impression that fauns are vegetarians. Well most are, but I once met a faun so desperate for food he ate a cow carcass. Where the heck did he get it anyway? We don't have any cows at Camp Jupiter! If he can find a cow carcass he can find food!

And he was kinda stupid. He could find all the food he needs for the rest of his life in a recycling bin.

**except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.**

No way! Another daughter of Minerva, or Greek for…

**She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, **_**You killed a minotaur! **_**or **_**Wow, you're so awesome! **_**or something like that.**

"You wish!" teased Octavian cruelly. Idiot, he's teasing a book! Hey, I guess I am not that better. I am worrying about a fictional character!

**Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."**

"Burn!" shouted Bobby. Everyone jumped because we forgot he was here. I was surprised. In the Greek camp do they stoop as low as to insult instead of make comebacks. In the Roman camp Minerva kids were better than that. Maybe I shouldn't make judgments to quickly…

Wait! Did they say gray eyes? Nevermind. I hate them both from the deepest pit in tartaurus.

**Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.**

**"So," I said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"**

"Now that's an attempt to make awkward conversation!" Bobby once again was in hysterics.

Nico rolled his eyes, Jade kicked him. Nico visibly winced.

**"Not Mr. Brunner," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."**

**"Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "And Mr. D ... does that stand for something?"**

"Gods, that will go over well!" I whispered. Now I was sincerely concerned for his wellbeing.

**Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."**

Since it's so obvious that Percy doesn't like him, it will only confirm that Percy'll do this many times in the future.

**"Oh. Right. Sorry."**

"Doubtful…" laughed Gwen.

**"I must say, Percy," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."**

"A) that's kind of foreboding. B) it's only expected that for a while Percy will be calling Chiron, ." snorted Frank.

**"House call?"**

**"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to ... ah, take a leave of absence."**

"Why didn't Percy remember when the teacher left? Since he isn't mortal so he should be able to see through the mist?" Gwen asked, confused.

"He didn't even know he was a half mortal, and his powers only half exist because he doesn't know he has them. Therefore, he only could half see through the mist. Which probably means he can remember it a little better." I replied with an equally confusing answer.

**I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.**

Told ya he remembers!

**"You came to Yancy just to teach me?" I asked.**

**Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first."**

"Yep, that will make him feel like he belongs!" laughed Jade.

**We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."**

**"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"**

**"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.**

"He's underestimates the god." I sighed. "This is not going to have a happy ending."

**"You **_**do **_**know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously.**

**"I'm afraid not," I said.**

**"I'm afraid not, **_**sir**_**," he said.**

"You shouldn't call Percy sir. It'll boost his ego." Bobby stated.

**"Sir," I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.**

"Don't we all?" Frank said. Dakota made death threats under his breath.

**"Well," he told me, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all **_**civilized **_**young men to know the rules."**

"Everyone knows the rules to Pac-Man!" shouted Bobby.

Hazel replied. " I don't think that's what he meant…"

**"I'm sure the boy can learn," Chiron said.**

**"Please," I said, "what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brunner, Chiron why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?"**

Yeah! -Chiron, why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach Percy? No offense, Percy.

**Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question."**

Ditto!

**The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.**

**Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what my average was, **_**I **_**was his star student. He expected **_**me **_**to have the right answer.**

Because that class is all about learning about your dad! You _should _ be the star student!

**other tell you nothing?'**

**"She said ..." I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her."**

**"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?"**

"The biddings more important than whether or not Percy makes it to camp safely." Hazel rolled her eyes. "sounds right."

Everyone, sans Sean's posse, nodded in agreement.

**"What?" I asked.**

**He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.**

**"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."**

Tacky…

**"Orientation film?" I asked**

"Yes orientation film! Stop repeating everything he says!" Cried Gwen obviously annoyed.

**"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know-" he pointed to the horn in the shoe box- "that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods- the forces you call the Greek gods- are very much alive."**

"They're Greek!" Naomi yelled, the only one surprised. That's it, we are definitely kicking her out of the group after this chapter. After I talk to Lupa about this so called Greek Camp.

**I stared at the others around the table.**

**I waited for somebody to yell, **_**Not! **_**But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.**

**"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"**

"Only if you want to be a pile of ashes on the ground…" Dakota trailed off. Even he was aware of his father's short temper. Nico seemed to find this amusing.

**"Eh? Oh, all right."**

**Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.**

Why? Oh yeah, he failed his task. Almost forgot within the drama.

**"Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as god."**

This is an old argument. Thanks Percy for starting it up again.

"The gods are real, God… that's a whole different matter." Said Naomi.

Before Gwen could retort anything Octavian interrupted. Nobody minded.

**"Well, now," Chiron said. "God- capital **_**G**_**, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."**

**"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about-"**

**"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."**

"Only if you're feeling suicidal." I said outloud. Were people that surprised that I had a sense of humor? That's hurtful…

**"Smaller?"**

**"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."**

**"Zeus," I said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."**

See! Bacchus or… Dionysus (it felt weird saying that) only confirmed his hatred for respect for the gods.

**And there it was again, distant thunder on a cloud less day.**

And that only confirmed the Gods hatred for him…

**"Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."**

**"But they're stories," I said. "They're- myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."**

**"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson"-I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody- "what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" **

**Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals- they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come **_**so-o-o **_**far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."**

**I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if... he wasn't. **

"Listen and you won't be asking that question!" said Jade. We all were irritated and impatient.

**It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.**

**"Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that **_**immortal **_**means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"**

**I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.**

**"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," I said.**

**"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that some day people would call **_**you **_**a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"**

"Geez. He didn't have to play the orphan card!"

**My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. I said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."**

"You know where that will get you put? Six feet under!" Hazel said mournfully.

"Trust us. At one point we all tried." Bobby said in the same tone.

**"Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."**

**Grover said, "P-please, sir. He's just lost his mother. He's in shock."**

**"A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don't even believe.'"**

**He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.**

Ummm….. is that allowed?

**My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.**

**"Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions."**

Nope! Typical. What was it this time? Replacing Persephone's pomegranates with grapes? Or was it that off limits nymph? Even better? Terrorizing several campers into madness?

**Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.**

**"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"**

"Right, that sounds sincere."

**More thunder.**

**Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.**

**Chiron winked at me. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."**

Knew it. In Greece didn't Dionysus have a wife, Princess Ariana or Adrienne something or another?

**"A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.**

**"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time- well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away- the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha.' Absolutely unfair."**

Poor nymph.

**Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.**

"That's a normal impression." Bobby said.

Dakota made the same face that gave the exact same impression.

**"And ..." I stammered, "your father is ..."**

Isn't it obvious? Skin of a tiger? Mr.'d'? Disappearing wine?

_**"Di immortales, **_**Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."**

"Notice the of course. Way to make a kid feel stupid!"

**I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.**

**"You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine."**

We all groaned. He was being painfully slow.

**Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?"**

**"Y-yes, Mr. D."**

**"Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"**

"How could you mistake _him_ for the goddess of love and beauty?" Hazel said, dubious.

Dakota had a look on his face said 'he is my father. Is there something you're implying?'

**"You're a god."**

**"Yes, child."**

**"A god. You."**

And you are Percy.

**He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. **

**I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.**

We all turned green and blue.

**"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.**

**"No. No, sir."**

**The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."**

**"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."**

**I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.**

Mr.D must realize Chiron is immortal too.

**"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, **_**again, **_**about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."**

Hmmmm, again?

**Grover's face was beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."**

**Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."**

**He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.**

**"Will Grover be okay?" I asked Chiron.**

**Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been ... ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."**

**"Mount Olympus," I said. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?"**

"Is the Empire State Building really in New York?" Nico asked the question sarcastically.

**"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do."**

**"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like ... in **_**America**_**?"**

Well there has to be a reason that Camp Halfblood is in America instead of Greece too, right?

**"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."**

**"The what?"**

**"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know- or as I hope you know, since you passed my course- the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps- Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on- but the same forces, the same gods."**

**"And then they died."**

"Please tell me he isn't going to repeat it all!" Naomi was in hysterics. Like she was listening the first time.

**"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture.**

**People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington.**

**I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. **

**Like it or not- and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either- America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."**

**It was all too much, especially the fact that **_**I **_**seemed to be included in Chiron's **_**we, **_**as if I were part of some club.**

"Who wouldn't want to be in the carnival of freaks?" said Dakota.

"Hey. I am not a freak!" Hazel replied angrily.

"Keep telling yourself that."

**"Who are you, Chiron? Who ... who am I?"**

Sudden case of amnesia?

**Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.**

**"Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to 'meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be smores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."**

Frank looked disgusted. "GROSS! Chocolate! It's all about the marshmallows!"

**And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. **

Everyone looked on with wide eyes.

"He's a centaur." I said this slowly and simply. Octavian rolled his eyes.

"Only and idiot wouldn't know that!"

The others stared at the ground uneasily and I felt terrible. I shot a sharp scowl towards him.

**And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. **

Hopefully made out of plastic.

**I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.**

**"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."**

That was it. I should get this over with.

"So… Naomi."

* * *

><p><strong>AN**

**Yes, Naomi is annoying me SO much!  
>Grr!<strong>

**This wasn't supposed to be a funny chapter so don't waste a review on that! You will find out later that I have decided to bring Percy in at the very end of this book. That way when people in the future read it they will be encouraged to read the next one! If and when I get there. **

**The question about Jade.**

**I forgot that none of you guys saw the submit ion comment of her.**

**She is a friend of Percy's. kind of a little more aquatinted than all the regular campers. But less than Nico and Annabeth and Grover. She is still a great friend of his but I can't change the book that way she is in a quest. And that's a reason the others know him a bit better.**

**And she is leader of the Hecate cabin which is how she knows Nico a little better than the Romans. **

**She's a cool character and hope this will clear things up.**

**Guess how many Faves/Alerts? Like, 109. That's right, you read this strait. 40 reveiws. Do you think we can do better? I do.**

**And I am very grateful to everyone who has reviewed already. **

**And yes, I am getting to Reyna's hatred of Annabeth and Percy for destroying Circe's Island next chapter. There is so much I want to include I keep on forgetting it.**

**One last thing. The next chapter will probably just be Naomi getting kicked out and Reynas discussion with Lupa. No book reading. It would get too long, and this one is WAY longer than I wished so… yeah.**

**Questions, Comments, And Opinions belong in that cute little box at the bottom of the page.**

**Love you all!**

**Lilyflower11**


	8. An Ordinary Talk With Lupa

**Hey! Thanks to the people who reviewed this chapter!**

**Draconias**

**Bright Blue 101: Thanks:)! The difference is that Naomi isn't supposed to bug me. Which is weird because I am the one making her annoying… Oh, and when I make Octavian irritating, that's not mean, that's his character. AND I don't do it as much as I should.**

**sir-midget99**

**Twighlight Nyx: A vow is written on my profile. I hate abandoned stories! Especially the good ones!**

**Dov5e**

**Anime Princess: Time heals all wounds. And Reyna is happy that she found Camp Jupiter, even to the costs that it took.**

**XoreandoX: Thanks! This really puts things into perspective. I was kind of afraid that Nico's comments would get boring, but then your reminded me that Nico wasn't there! LOL! I rarely read off my computer, so we have something in common. And it's easier just to hold it in your hand.**

**Thanks again, can we get more?**

**Reyna POV**

"So… Naomi."

"Yes, Reyna?" she replied innocently. I mentally rolled my eyes.

"Why are you here?" I asked this bluntly. She flinched and I immediately wanted to take it back. Naturally that made me hate her more.

"What do you mean? You invited me…."

I groaned out loud. " I MEAN how have you contributed to the group?"

"I've made comments like the others. What have they contributed to the group?"

This was an accurate thing we could debate about. I reminded myself, you have to be up and front about it if you want her to leave.

"You haven't been making comments. You've been making interruptions. Almost everyone here has read except you," now that was a lie. "And you are annoying me, and many others!" at least I hope.

"Yeah, I mean we have to answer the most obvious questions for you before we read." Nico input.

Jade's eyes flashed towards Naomi. Out of everyone I think that Naomi annoyed her the most. "And you're stupid." She, like so many others didn't have a lot of patience for daughters of Venus.

Yes, Venus had boys, but they usually were smarter. Or had more common sense.

Her eyebrows scrunched together, did she understand what was at stake?

"And our comments are actually entertaining!" Bobby boasted as Dakota shook his head vigorously.

Naomi shook, "What do you mean?"

"Naomi. I think you should leave."

Light returned to her eyes as she comprehended what we were saying. It left quickly.

"Why! What did I do wrong?"

"Do we need to repeat it? Jade… It's your time to shine." I said.

Jade seemed to get the hint. She lifted her hands, she was going to erase her memory that way she wouldn't bother us in the future.

"No! You don't have to do it! It isn't the answer!" Gwen cried. Enough with the drama! Please!

Jade shot her a glare. This was the moment she was waiting for too.

But I understand why she was sticking up for her. Even if Naomi didn't remember it, Gwen would feel like a bad friend for not putting up a fight.

I liked Gwen and I didn't want to do that to her, no matter how much Naomi annoyed me.

But what was weird is that Gwen somehow agreed that Naomi was irritating. If Gwen went somewhere then Naomi had to go with no matter what.

"Okay. Fine. Naomi time to go. See you at evening muster." I said shortly.

She steadily stood up, she looked nervous with everyone staring at her which was odd for a child of Venus.

Once she left there was an awkward silence where we all stared at each other waiting for someone to say something.

Octavian coughed, which made Bobby start laughing. Everyone else joined in. I couldn't laugh, there were too many things at stake.

Like the fact that Percy and Annabeth were Greek Demigods who destroyed my home. And the fact that now that I finally get why Lord Mercury gave us the book, I also realize that this book could be an illegal artifact from outside of camp.

Would I get in trouble if I told Lupa we have been reading the book without her permission? The protection of Lord Mercury could protect us from her wrath but then I would have to reveal that Lord Mercury stole it from Lady Juno. They didn't get along well and that could start a war among the gods.

Lady Juno's specialty was meddling with people's memories and she didn't take it well when something was revealed before it was supposed to.

Back to the point, I had a decision to make.

"Hey I have a lot of work to do, let's take a break and start up on the next chapter, tomorrow, here. At three o'clock sharp."

Everyone nodded. They seemed to know that I needed time to think things through. They already were talking about the Greek camp.

I walked out of the clearing into Mars Field and passed a group of campers playing Ultimate Frisbee, with as seen on VulcanTV, SuperTough magic Frisbee. The magic part of it was that while in the air, just for a second it turned invisible leaving all the players trying to analyze where it would go.

A bunch of Lars surrounded the a daughter of Minerva congratulating her on her latest invention. And also congratulating a Vulcan son on engineering it all.

I heard that they were being featured in God's United Today magazine, and were finalists in the award of 'Demigods of the Year' against campers who have already left camp for several years now.

Learning that there was a Greek Camp changed things. Could there be a Greek Demigod who had already invented the knife that could transform into a key? How disappointed Sarah and Parker would be, they spent so much time on that.

On the way to the Praetor Tent I passed a couple of Mercury children setting traps around the armor shed that was exclusively for the children of Mars.

Out of all the campers, if they were on your side, they always will be the ones you have the most fun with. No matter what happened they were always the ones to make you smile.

I passed a forge with at least a dozen children of Vulcan working hard on a project. One of them smiled and waved. She was the one making me a new imperial gold sword. I wanted a new extra long one, the roman style was short and close and anyone who fought roman would be thrown off if I used a long one with a long sword fighting style. The romans didn't train with long swords so it would be perfect.

"Hey Lydia! How is it going on the sword?" I asked. I couldn't wait to get it.

"I am almost finished. I am on the last step. This is also you're last chance. Are you sure you want it long? It's unnatural, and will feel awkward in your hands. It's out of style, and remember you're giving me 20 denarii for this. I don't want you to regret it."

I was touched that she was so concerned. "That's exactly why I want it. Nobody trains with a long sword so I will have the advantage."

"Okay, if that's what you want." She said this uneasily, as if she doubted I would be satisfied.

I left her there and went straight to my private tent to organize the next activity.

Tonight would be free night. Free night would happen once a week, used to brush up on skills in private or just buy new weapons, or just to do mortal fun things like going to the theaters.

There was a new movie every week, done just for free night. This week was Gladiator, with Russel Crowe. My favorite. I might just go see it, even though everyone expected me to do the archery training. I loved archery but it couldn't get you where sword and knife fighting could. Lucky thing was, I excelled at both.

Then the day after, we would do old fashioned capture the flag.

That would be new, so I am sure many people will enjoy it. There will be only one rule: Be creative. The campers are so obvious. To predictable. If you were up against a Cyclops, they have been around a while so they anticipate the obvious. We need to train that way we are unpredictable but rational at the same time.

The perks of being praetor is not only do you plan the games to your advantage, but you get to make plans ahead of time according to the game and which teams are allied to who.

The motto I live by is: Power in numbers. The more people there are. The more people to work together with.

With a twist, there would be three teams. Because there were so many cohorts we had to make more teams. That way we weren't all crowded in one place.

I already picked which cohorts would be with which, so all they had to do is pick their team leaders. The praetors were always the team leaders so my team had nothing to worry about. I even had a plan laid out.

No one would suspect us to hide our flag in the Venus perfume storage. It was surrounded by perfume that would make any reasonable person gag.

That's why I pick cohort 3 as one of my allies. That cohort had four Venus children, and they were the only ones who could survive the fumes of their stash storage.

I also picked 5, and 7 they had the most campers, mostly Mars. Mars were good strategists too, so this would work out great.

I was the purple team.

The green team would be paired as cohort 1, 8, and 10. A mix of minors and Minerva children.

The red team would be 2, 4, 6, 5. The smallest cohorts, so they were usually last picked. They all had to be on the same team that way they were the same size as the others. They were a mix of Vulcan, Apollo, Bacchus, and Mercury. They all were good fighters but most of the camp followed my motto.

There also wasn't a single fighter that was a Mars child in those cohorts, they needed someone brutal and rash on their team to make them less predictable. There wasn't anyone in those cohorts that had the creativity and courage.

This time cohort 9 would be sitting out and do the refereeing. Those were mostly a mix of Ceres and a few Venus's. That may sound like a weak cohort but they both had determination to prove everyone wrong. Meaning that they were vicious.

I've avoided it too long now. I'd have to talk to Lupa soon. I'd also have to tell her that those filthy Greeks were the ones who destroyed my home. Gods, I hated thinking about it. If I could never turn a page in that dreadful book again, I would.

But Lupa didn't accept weakness from anyone. Which was ironic, when I was growing up my mom didn't either.

And I was okay with that. I'm not usually a weak person.

By now I was standing outside her den, what was I waiting for?

I knocked and waited.

Two wolves walked out growling to each other. They both froze when they saw me.

_**What are you doing here, head Praetor?**_

I kind of like being called that.

"I am here to have an unarranged meeting with Lupa." I replied nervously. If you were informal about anything, they would eat you.

Luckily my high status saved me.

_**Fine. She will be waiting for you in her library.**_

The wolf said this gruffly, as if he had trouble admitting that I was worthy to be in the presence of the great Lupa. I hope they don't sense my sarcasm.

I went in and turned right, straight towards the library. Luckily I brought the extra book from my shelf to show her proof of it's existence, you wouldn't believe what you could get eaten for here!

I ignored all the books stacked on shelves that towered towards the domed glass ceiling. Usually I would be staring in awe. But this was under different circumstances.

"Lupa?" I called.

I heard a muffled bark from behind bookshelf number 58, and to the side of bookshelf number 99.

I came to a large table with paper scattered everywhere. I don't know how I didn't notice where the bookshelves stopped but the clearing was miniscule compared to how many shelves there were.

"Lupa, I came here to show you this."

She transformed into a tall graceful human with cold hazel eyes. She gingerly took the book from me. I heard her breath catch in her throat when she saw the cover.

"Is there really a Greek camp?"

"I've been forbidden to tell you anything. Why didn't you come to me when you received the book?"

I didn't want to answer, but you couldn't stop the inevitable.

So I told her how I got it, my reasoning, and how far we were in the book.

It ended with her laughing. It was a bark like laugh that wasn't made for joining in.

"It's okay, child. You still have a long way to go. He won't be dying anytime soon."

I hate it when someone calls me Child, young-un', or mini/micro/tiny god.

I don't like the way that sounded, 'you have a long way to go.' How did she even know that?

I never said we all thought he was going to die…. Even though it was true.

Lupa was the first person I met when I came to camp, so she knew all about Circe's island. I told her all about my dream and what I suspected.

"Don't make rash decisions or judgments. Yes, I do believe this is the boy but don't judge to quickly."

"How do you know?" I asked. I felt like a whining child. But I need answers. She isn't giving me any. Maybe this is just a waste of time.

"That is for me to know, and you to obsess about." She smirked slightly. Now that isn't a sight you'd see everyday.

"So there is a Greek Camp?" I asked quickly. I knew what was coming.

"Yes, child, but that is all I can say." Then she snapped. Smoke appeared and I found myself lying in my bed with the book in my lap.

I checked my watch and cursed.

I don't want to be late to Gladiator.

**A/N**

**What's up? **

**I've decided that if I am feeling nice, I will update once a week. It will usually be a Friday, Saturday, of Sunday night. Or if I am feeling lazy, a Monday night. But most likely not.**

**The next chapter will have reading and more hatred for Percy and Annabeth. But not to much. I feel as though I am not doing enough of it, they destroyed her home. She should be angry right. **

**But yes, in the end she will like them both for bring her to Camp Jupiter, blah, blah blah. What do you think?**

**What do you think of Frank, and Hazel's POV in Son of Neptune?**

**What do I need to work on?**

**What am I doing well at?**

**Coke or Pepsi?**

**Apples or Oranges?**

**Katy Perry or Lady Gaga? (those don't even compare!)**

**How many of you even read the Author's Note?**

**What should happen next in the story, something interesting and new?**

**BTW: If you think this chapter is crappy, it's because I am typing it at 11:30 at night.**

**PLEASE REVIEW! It would mean the world to me! Eventually I'll get bored with the story and abandon it because no one gives feedback! Truth: That's typical for all fanfics, the author's start it two years later. Everyone is so happy they all review until their fingers fall off… Maybe I should do that…**

**Hugs and kisses to everyone who reviewed!**

**Love you all!**

**Lilyflower11**


	9. Alexander Arrives

**Hi! What's new? Thanks for the reviews! Thanks to Arashi OniTenshi Mitarashi, and Jocasta Silver (don't worry if your character isn't used a lot at first, I have plans for her.)**

**Btw: Ohhh! You caught me, If you look closely in this chapter, I gave away a hint that I'm an American. Congrats to all the stalkers, you're one step closer to knowing my location…**

**Reyna's POV**

* * *

><p>It had been a whole two and a half hours since Lupa SaF ed (Snapped and fogged) her to her tent.<p>

Now Reyna was sitting at evening muster with the group that she had been reading with earlier. Minus Gwen. She refused to sit with them because Naomi was unofficially banned.

They had all agreed, plus Gwen, to meet after a half an hour after muster to meet. Luckily they wouldn't be missing any evening activities because Reyna had planned them for tomorrow.

They all scarfed down as much food as they could so they could get to the next chapter faster.

"Bobby, please pass the mashed potatoes."

The mashed potatoes crashed into Bobby's head before he passed them to Hazel.

"Dakota, that's disgusting! Cheesecake with their hands! Your hands must be stickier than _bob crustulum scriptor__**." **_This I said while gagging, thoroughly disgusted. How in Pluto's name did he get New York style cheesecake? Camp Jupiter didn't serve anything that… modern.

Frank started laughing, and I grinned. Everyone looked at us funny. But to us, it made sense, in an oddly gross way. So we didn't explain.

Jade and Nico looked weirded out the most. It was probably because they thought everyone else knew what we were talking about.

It was something else, I could tell. It's like they have never heard latin in their life.

"Are we supposed—" Nico said before Jade coughed and looked pointedly at him.

"Haha! So funny!" Jade laughed trying to look natural. Nico followed, or at least tried, to follow her lead.

Yep, they defiantly had no idea what was going on.

I tried breaking the tension by ordering a hamburger with extra tomatoes. Instead, a large bowel or macaroni and cheese collided with Bobby's head again. I didn't know they served mac and cheese!

"OUCH! Reyna, order more clearly next time, or do you like intentionally giving me concussions?" Bobby complained. Everyone was silently staring.

I laughed, "Hey, you think you've gotten it hard? Look at Jo over there!"

A rather large Vulcan son was sitting next to a small Minerva boy. This must have been an unnatural child of Vulcan because the whole meal all he ordered was blocks of Iron. Every ten minutes the boy would call for more, and each time the block would slam into the son of Minerva.

After twenty minutes the child of the goddess of wisdom got up and switched seats, this time next to a child of Somnus. Yes, those kids could get boring. Especially because all they did was sleep.

But they sometimes forgot to eat, so Jo would have no problem with being slammed by food.

Bobby cringed in condolence.

Quickly changing the subject to something that managed to capture everyone's attention.

"So when do you guys think Percy is going to die?" Bobby cough, laughed.

Octavian rolled his eyes. Did we invite him to sit with us? I can't recall doing that.

"He isn't going to die, idiot."

How did he know? For once, the way he said it, not at all in a mysterious voice, made us pay attention to him. He sounded like he knew, and was correct. Outside of his head, I mean. To him everything he said was right.

"What makes you think that? The kid has death coming for him. Like death to Nico, only not so friendly." Jade contradicted.

"I am a seer."

"You must be deaf then. Have you heard a word we have been reading?" Nico sided with Jade. Funny how they both were always on the same side, and both so very sure of themselves.

It was a coincidence. They were great friends, and very powerful. Who wouldn't be sure of themselves, if they were Nico or Jade?

A camper interrupted the argument. I didn't know him that well, all I could say was his name was Alexander. Brother to Jade. He didn't do any bidding in the underworld. I could tell because he didn't have as dark of an aura.

Alexander was two inches smaller than Jade. So make that about 5' 4". Not that I could tell from a distance.

Another reason that he looked vastly different than Jade was because while she almost blended with the shadows, he reflected in the sun. If you had never met him, you would guess he was a son of Apollo. Don't tell him that, he'd be very offended.

Anyway, he was about twelve years old. I'm not sure because I don't even remember the last time I've seen him. He had a light tan, to us at least. Some of the kids here looked so tan, an outsider would have thought they had just come out of a deep fryer.

The light tan matched his complication, though. He had white/blonde hair that matched his silver eyes. There was no way he wore contacts.

He wore black pants, and a long sleeved silver shirt. How could he stand it? It must be ninety degrees outside!

A bunch of Venus girls giggled as he walked past. He grinned goofily. Immature twelve-year-old.

Some people turned around to see what the commotion was about.

Being the silly person he was, he got along real well with the Mercury children. As soon as they saw him, a whole group of them waved him over.

Alexander just held up the 'one second' finger and continued walking towards us.

"Hey citizens of Camp Jupiter! Praetor!" I mentally rolled my eyes, "Nico, Jade." They both looked slightly offended and put off. Like he spilled a major secret. Jeez, they didn't have to be so dramatic. This guy was only joking after all.

"Alexander…" Jade replied stiffly.

"Yes wonderful to see you too, dear sister!" this time he turned towards me "Ahh, yes, I am going to be staying here for a while. Could you just let me room with Jade?"

Without waiting for a reply he gave me his thanks.

"Great! Now I'm going to pull Jade aside for a moment. It's ok, she won't be at whatever event you have planned tonight." He pulled Jade away by the arm and dragged her away.

Jade cried out in pain, reached for Nico and successfully pulled him away with her. Who knew that, that twelve year old boy was so strong. He certainly didn't learn get the strength here! The most he's ever spent here was four days total in his whole lifetime.

"So let's meet after dinner ok?" I asked thoughtfully. It had been several hours since any of us had been in the clearing. I should get some of my favorite nymphs to prepare the area.

Who knew how many animals stopped by to drink some left over Kool Aid?

Everyone agreed. I didn't have the choice on how to use my Spare time, because I had to 'chaperone' the dishwashers. There was a time when no one had to chaperone, but that was before a child of Mercury started a waterfight, and the water damaged some ones eye.

You see, at Camp Jupiter we use a saltwater rinse to kill a bacteria to the core of the plate.

The power of salt.

It was an hour after dinner and I knew everyone was waiting in the clearing.

That little son of Bacchus!

No really, he was a son of Bacchus.

The point is, he must have sensed my impatience. So every four dishes he washed, he filled the whole sink with white wine. Then his drying partner would drop the dish in surprise when they found it was sticky.

Currently I was sprinting past the field of Mars, into the clearing, and stopped in shock.

Everyone was sitting strait, in a circle prepared to read. Someone even had a book in their hands, poised to open.

I looked up and saw it was Alexander. He was casting arrogant smirks in my direction, as if to say, 'I'd like to see you try to get me to leave!'.

"What are _you _doing here?" I could feel my nose crinkling.

Nico started grumbling. With his short sleeves, the red marks of where Jades hands had grasped were on display.

"I was invited." He said this simply. Doubting my ability to remove him from our ranks.

"Do you really?" I asked.

I know that my answer didn't match my question, but he seemed to understand. What I asked was, did he really think that I wouldn't practice my authority over him.

Oh great. Now I know why half the camp thinks that I am cold hearted and doesn't know how to have fun.

Crap! Alexander's trick is working!

"Jade made a promise that she will die if she breaks!"

Was there such a promise? It's not like we're reading anything important.

Jade looked up at me. She was pleading me with her eyes. Maybe he was telling the truth.

Not wanting to start up old arguments I reluctantly complied.

Alexander grinned mischievously. Frank started telling him about what was happening in the story, catching him up.

"—No it's ok, I already know." How in Pluto did he know?

"Then start the chapter then!" Frank looked frusterated.

It's ok, Frank. Alexander has that effect on some people.

"**I BECOME SUPREME LORD OF THE BATHROOM" **Alexander started the chapter.

"We all knew this day would come, it's ok, just be yourself Alex." Bobby looked at him with great condolence.

Alexander groweled.

Jade, who must still be angry at him pushed him from his sitting position, that way he was laying sideways on top of his arm.

Alexander rolled his eyes, brushed the grass off his metallic silver sweatshirt, and began again.

**Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I'd done pooper-scooper patrol in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I'm sorry, I did not trust Chiron's back end the way I trusted his front. **

"Don't the delinquents choose whether or not the get pooper patrol, or litter snaggers at Central Park?"

"If New York is anything like it is here, I would pick pooper scooper patrol too."

"_OR,_ how about you skip breaking the law on Thanksgiving for a day, and plan whatever you were doing for the next. Postpone your crimes!"

**We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, "That's **_**him**_**."**

Do tell, was the word italicized out of disgust or awe?

**Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn't normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable.**

"Oh, they don't do that on purpose? I thought it was a special technique! That's how Dan's friend, Larry got my twenty bucks for coke!" Nobody cares Bobby.

**I felt like they were expecting me to do a flip or something.**

Well that would be entertaining.

**I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I'd realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was checking out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.**

Everyone shivered. Gwen flipped around and whimpered. Out from behind a tree hopped a grey bushy tailed rabbit.

**"What's up there?" I asked Chiron.**

**He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."**

**"Somebody lives there?"**

**"No," he said with finality. "Not a single living thing."**

"Not a single living thing. Someone's keeping dead bodies in their closet."

Nico laughed. "More ways than one!"

**I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain.**

**"Come along, Percy," Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. "Lots to see."**

**We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.**

**Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."**

Pleasures of have many _Demeter _(felt weird thinking that) campers. We do bug (monster) extermination.

The truth is, that many mortals believe that their house had been infected with rodents or large insects. While in truth, It really is just a monster protected by the mist.

Ok, growing strawberries is cooler, I'll give them that.

**He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. **

"Or they are trying to grow fast enough to strangle him." I glared at Octavian. Those Gods may be Greek, but they aren't afraid to kill one Demigod. That is, if they're anything like the Roman ones.

"Jeez Reyna, just a thought."

**It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.**

**I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music.**

**I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr. D.**

That cranky wine god did love degrading people…

**"Grover won't get in too much trouble, will he?" I asked Chiron. "I mean ... he was a good protector. Really."**

"Admit it, Percy. What was he doing when you were fighting for your life against the Minotaur?" This is the first time Alexander spoke other than reading the book. How was it that he took the least time to grow comfortable, but the he had the most people hating him already, out of everyone?

**Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horses back like a saddle. "Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable.**

**To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."**

**"But he did that!"**

"Is he implying that he switched places with Grover on the bus, so that it was actually Grover saving Percy?" Frank asked.

"What does that even mean?" Hazel looked at him like she was seeing him for the first time.

**"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. **

Tripilty do-DUH!

**I wanted to protest. None of what happened was Grover's fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If I hadn't given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble.**

**"He'll get a second chance, won't he?"**

**Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that **_**was **_**Grover's second chance, Percy.**

"Wait! Did the book say what happened the first time?" Jade looked around, searching faces.

"No, but they wouldn't have mentioned anything if it wasn't important to the plot." Nico answered. A look of realization washed over his face before he answered. What the heck?

**The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."**

**"How old is he?"**

**"Oh, twenty-eight."**

"How in the world!—" Bobby exclaimed.

I quickly explained to him the life span of fauns.

"But Dan looks like a fifty year old hobo! He can't be…"

"A) He is a hobo. B) fifty plus fifty is one hundred. Yes that would make him a century old. Bobby, I think it's time to learn to count. I can't add for you anymore." I decided to teach him later. No matter how many objections I received from that one particular member.

**"He'll get a second chance, won't he?"**

**Grover signed even more miserably than before.**

**Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that **_**was **_**Grover's second chance, Percy. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."**

**"How old is he?"**

**"Oh, twenty-eight."**

Horrible! And that's why fauns here _choose_ to be unemployed.

**"That's horrible."**

**"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career."**

What other career was there for fauns? I don't think they would make that much money on anti-animal-slaughter movement.

**"That's not fair," I said. "What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?"**

**Chiron looked away quickly. "Let's move along, shall we?"**

"It's official, someone died." Dakota said with smug satisfaction on his face.

Jade gave him an odd look. "How'd you know?"

Funny that she didn't say how do you know, but how did you know. Like she wasn't denying it.

"It's a gift."

"You're son of the wine god. What does that have to do with death? Shouldn't that be my gift?" Nico looked put out.

**But I wasn't quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about my mother's fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word **_**death. **_**The beginnings of an idea—a tiny, hopeful fire—started forming in my mind.**

"Do tell me, how many people do you know that have survived coming back from the Underworld?" Bobby asked the book horrendously.

" I have!" shouted all three new comers. I forgot you could get from one side of the country to the other in an hour if you were able to travel in the Underworld. Handy skill.

**Chiron," I said. "If the gods and Olympus and all that are real ..."**

**"Yes, child?"**

**"Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?"**

"Subtle, very subtle Percy." At this Alexander laughed.

Gwen laughed. What was it with those Venus children? It was like they were under a spell or something.

**Chiron's expression darkened.**

**"Yes, child." He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. **

Maybe he should've just denied it.

**"There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now ... until we know more ... I would urge you to put that out of your mind."**

"Well he didn't have to be so morbid about it! How bout' saying 'Yeah, there's and Underworld. But it's a bright happy place down there! In fact your mom is in the attic right now, waiting for you!" Hazel laughed.

"But dear Hazel, that would be lying." Gwen said in a sweet voice.

**"What do you mean, 'until we know more'?"**

It only means that no body's ever come back, idiot for asking!

**"Come, Percy. Let's see the woods."**

"A lot of bad things happen in the woods!"

Yeah Bobby, like this book.

**As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans. **

Doubtful. It's just that the fauns wouldn't let the demigods pollute it like mortals do.

**Chiron said, "The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed."**

**"Stocked with what?"**

"Squirrels, Percy stocked with squirrels." Dakota pointed towards the closest one sitting in a dead tree a few feet away.

**I asked. "Armed with what?"**

"Muffins, armed with muffins, Percy." I scowled at Dakota. It was annoying to have to stop reading because the moron had to make some comment regarding Percy's non-existence stupidity.

It was new to him, they acted the same way when they first found out too.

Wait! Why was I defending him I was supposed to be outraged at him.

**You'll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and shield?"**

"He's new, why would he have his own sword and shield?" Nico rolled his eyes.

**"My own—?"**

**"No," Chiron said. "I don't suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I'll visit the armory later."**

**I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, **

"We went over this already! It isn't a summer camp, it's a safe haven for demigods in need of protection in order to train!"

**but there was too much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn't seem to like very much),**

**the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.**

**"Sword and spear fights?" I asked.**

**"Cabin challenges and all that," he explained. "Not lethal. Usually. **

"dot, dot, dot usually. Implying something?"

**Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall."**

**Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.**

**"What do you do when it rains?" I asked.**

**Chiron looked at me as if I'd gone a little weird.**

Yeah, it doesn't usually rain in New York does it?

**"We still have to eat, don't we?" I decided to drop the subject.**

Aren't there magical borders around their camp to protect it from bad weather? That would be lame if they didn't. There were borders around Camp Jupiter!

**Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I'd ever seen.**

"Well why would they have every god specializing in the same sort of thing? That would make the world black and white! Literally!" Jade debated this outloud to herself, unaware people were staring.

**They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more my speed).**

**In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined fire pit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick.**

"Vest—I meant _Hestia!" _Gwen said excitedly. She looked proud she knew the name. Shouldn't it be the other way around, they were _Graecis_ after all.

Maybe it was because they were gods. They are like the Romans, only they were drunks.

**The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them.**

Raising my eyebrows I made a revelation "Looks like Lord Jupiter, it feels odd saying this, Zeus is just as arrogant."

"Isn't that the truth!" Jade grinned happily at me. It was weird to see that at on her usually dark face.

**Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.**

**"Zeus and Hera?" I guessed.**

**"Correct," Chiron said.**

**"Their cabins look empty."**

**"Several of the cabins are. That's true. No one ever stays in one or two."**

"Wouldn't that be weird if he was a child of Jun—Hera?" Frank asked.

"Percy doesn't strike me as a son of Hera, not that I've ever known one. Why would she name him after a son that _Zeus _cheated on her with, the mom I mean, not Percy." Hazel contradicted.

"Yes…I guess, good save!"

**Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot.**

Is it just me, or is he choosing to be stubborn?

**Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?**

**I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.**

**It wasn't high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. **

"Uh-oh! Why is he attracted to that cabin? He'll get trampled by horses or drown in salt water!" I bit my lip nervously.

**Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come along, Percy."**

"Thank Gods Chiron stopped him before he could step inside!" I cried in relief. Neptune, or Poseidon must be, a powerful god who doesn't make mistakes and won't think twice before punishing someone who deserves it. But acts with mercy when their intentions are in the right place. Well, I guess you could say Percy is innocent… Maybe.

**Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.**

**Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists.**

"The Mars cabin." Frank looked disgusted. He _was _the only decent one in the cabin.

**The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar's head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. **

**She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.**

**I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron's hooves. "We haven't seen any other centaurs," I observed.**

That might just be a sore subject.

**"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."**

**"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really ..."**

"Yes Percy. Or did Mr.D's display not scare you enough?" Alex laughed. "Boy, those are horrible." Both Jade and Nico's eyes widened.

"What I didn't tell you guys, I mean, I meant to say, I've met Bacchus before." Alex scurried to fix the mistake he made.

Dakota's face fell. I knew why. Alex met his dad on numerous occasions and Dakota hadn't met him once.

**"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."**

**"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really ..."**

**I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn't have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.**

"Well it wouldn't be on mine either, if my 6th grade algebra teacher tried killing and accused me of stealing something too." Bobby said this solemnly.

**"Doesn't it ever get boring?"**

**"No, no," he said. "Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring."**

"Well that could mean two things, correct? People have died, and they died painfully, and it was exciting." Frank said.

"Well of course someone died, silly!" Gwen said as if it were painfully obvious.

**"Why depressing?"**

**Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.**

It was painfully obvious… to everyone but Percy.

**"Oh, look," he said. "Annabeth is waiting for us."**

That grey eyed girl! More information on what their punishment will be when I hunt them down.

**The blond girl I'd met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven.**

Mercury, or Hermes in this case. Usually takes undecided demigods. But for some reason the halfbloods here have been getting claimed right away for some reason. Lucky streak I guess.

**When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking about how much I drooled.**

"She's just jealous." Nico smirked.

**I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn't make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn't even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek.**

We all groaned. Octavian burst into fits of laughter. What's _wrong_ with him?

**There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.**

**"Annabeth," Chiron said, "I have masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy from here?"**

**"Yes, sir."**

**"Cabin eleven," Chiron told me, gesturing toward the doorway. "Make yourself at home."**

Why did they organize groups by parents? That's stupid. Actually that's a good idea. Why didn't we think of that?

**Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on **_**old. **_**The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it... ?**

**A caduceus.**

"Does anyone know what caduceus is even made to do? I would hate to have a useless staff printed on my arm just cause' my dad thought it was a cool symbol."

Octavian was referring to the tattoo of Camp Jupiter all campers get when they first arrive. At the bottom of every campers tattoo, if they were claimed, they got their parents symbol printed with it.

Most campers who were claimed displayed it, because it was a thing to be proud of. It showed that your godly parent thought you were important or cared.

Bet that made the nonclaimed campers feel bad.

What was weird was more of the already campers were getting claimed. Which is something that never happened before.

**Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.**

Look at what they stooped to. Do the gods even care?

**Chiron didn't go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.**

**"Well, then," Chiron said. "Good luck, Percy. I'll see you at dinner."**

**He galloped away toward the archery range.**

"Sounds suspiciously like 'they rode off into the sunset' right?" Only Bobby would make that comment. Well, maybe Dakota would, but he would never know where that was coming from.

**I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren't bowing anymore. They were staring at me, sizing me up. I knew this routine. I'd gone through it at enough schools.**

"That's a bit depressing. But hey, that's all our life story." Hazel flourished the dramatics in the sentence. Gwen added a sigh for affect.

**"Well?" Annabeth prompted. "Go on."**

Friendly person.

**So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself.**

"I've barely met anything about Percy, but I can already tell that it's typical." Alexander said this, but it gave me a feeling it meant something deeper.

Paranoia, I thought. Alex could do that to people.

**There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.**

**Annabeth announced, "Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven."**

**"Regular or undetermined?" somebody asked.**

"Whatsit matter, he's going to be stayin there anyway." Gwen's started speaking slurred. It had gotten late into the night without me realizing. I persuaded everyone not to fall asleep before the chapter ended.

**I didn't know what to say, but Annabeth said, "Undetermined."**

**Everybody groaned.**

Friendly folks.

**A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward.**

**"Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there."**

"Well at least there's one gracious kid in the cabin. I thought that the parents kid was supposed to inherit their skills. Mercury is the best actor on the face of the planet. Why aren't they?" Octavian's lip curled.

**The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.**

**"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing.**

This girl was making it too easy. Just another way to break her defenses.

**She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. "He's your counselor for now."**

**"For now?" I asked.**

"Does the word undetermined have any meaning to you?" Gwen was getting restless. I didn't blame her. But we were all demigods, and you don't see me complaining.

Oh yeah, I want to be here.

**"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."**

**I looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given me. I had nothing to put there to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves.**

**I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.**

**"How long will I be here?" I asked.**

**"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."**

**"How long will that take?"**

"Why is he acting like a toddler! Weak kid." Octavian was getting on my nerves. I'm tired, can we finish the damn chapter already?

**The campers all laughed.**

So did the ones reading.

**"Come on," Annabeth told me. "I'll show you the volleyball court."**

**"I've already seen it."**

"Way to make your situation worse. Embarrass yourself as much as you can."

**"Come on." She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing behind me.**

**When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that."**

**"What?"**

Doesn't she get it! He doesn't _want _to be there!

**She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."**

"A) Gag B) Why'd she say that outloud? C) If she thinks he looks good, she should see me. D) Awkward…." Frank laughed with the rest of the group.

**"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told me. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"**

**"To get killed?"**

**"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"**

**I shook my head. "Look, if the thing I fought really was **_**the **_**Minotaur, the same one in the stories ..."**

**"Yes."**

"How many people will have to tell him until he believes? It's not just something you give up on, then I will leave you alone."

**"Then there's only one."**

**"Yes."**

**"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? **

Yes.

**Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So ..."**

**"Monsters don't die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don't die."**

"Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts." Alex murmured to himself.

**"Oh, thanks. That clears it up."**

**"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they re-form."**

**I thought about Mrs. Dodds. "You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"**

**"The Fur ... I mean, your math teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."**

**"How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?"**

"She's a scary stalker who stole Pluto's helm of darkness." Dakota grinned at his joke.

"We don't joke about that, that would be very bad." I said wide eyed, That would be VERY bad.

**"You talk in your sleep."**

"Good, no helm of darkness involved."

**"You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"**

**Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.**

If only! It would make my job loads easier!

**"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."**

**"Look, is there anything we **_**can **_**say without it thundering?"**

Like I thought before, he's a toddler in disguise,

**I sounded whiny, even to myself,**

The only person who agrees with me is my target of elimination.

**but right then I didn't care. "Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there."**

**I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or ... your parent."**

**She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.**

"Wait for it, he's going to say Sally Jackson."

**"My mom is Sally Jackson," I said.**

There is a thin line between deranged and exhausted. I think he just crossed it.

**"She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to."**

**"I'm sorry about your mom, Percy. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about your other parent. Your dad."**

"Dramatic moment of realization," commentated Nico like an announcer.

**"He's dead. I never knew him."**

**Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she'd had this conversation before with other kids.**

**"Your father's not dead, Percy."**

"She would know, wouldn't she?"

**"How can you say that? You know him?**

"Back to the creepy stalker idea." Dakota added. Maybe he was right.

**"No, of course not."**

**"Then how can you say—"**

**"Because I know **_**you.**_ **You wouldn't be here if you weren't one of us."**

"A secret universe for troubled kids, basically." I sighed.

**"You don't know anything about me."**

**"No?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them."**

**"How—"**

**"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."**

Dakota smirked. Bobby opened his mouth to object.

**I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"**

**"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek.**

"Or for some kids Latin." Hazel added knowingly.

"Right…" Nico coughed. Alexander shot a not so subtle wink at him. Oddballs.

**And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battle field reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. **

**Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."**

"Because they want to be your friend. Then at the last moment they'll kill you brutally and leave you to bleed and rot." Bobby tried to upstage Dakota.

I really didn't need to hear that. It was so graphic I am traumatized.

**"You sound like ... you went through the same thing?"**

**"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."**

**"Ambrosia and nectar.**

"Best and worst thing that can happen to you. Hurts so much but tastes so good." Frank moaned before taking a slurp.

Maybe I should get a nymph to raid his bunk for secret stashes before he has to go through withdrawal.

**"The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would've killed a normal kid. It would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you'd be dead. Face it. You're a half-blood."**

"When you thought your life couldn't get any worse, your parents betray you by falling in love with a god or goddess." Gwen giggled at the thought. She probably thought it was tragically romantic.

**A half-blood.**

**I was reeling with so many questions I didn't know where to start.**

**Then a husky voice yelled, "Well! A newbie!"**

**I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.**

**"Clarisse," Annabeth sighed. "Why don't you go polish your spear or something?**

Her name is Clarrise. How come all the bullys have old fashioned names?

**"Sure, Miss Princess," the big girl said. "So I can run you through with it Friday night."**

_**''Erre es korakas!"**_ **Annabeth said, which I somehow under stood was Greek for 'Go to the crows!' though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded. "You don't stand a chance."**

**"We'll pulverize you," Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn't sure she could follow through on the threat.**

"Typical children of Mars. Can't live up to their threats." Bobby looked at Frank like he were disappointed in him.

**She turned toward me. "Who's this little runt?**

"Turning the attention away from her. Usually they're attention hogs. Well unless they lose that is." Bobby named off the characteristics.

**"Percy Jackson," Annabeth said, "meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares."**

"Ares is…" Gwen looked a little bit confused. It's not like we havn't been name the forth mentioned god a couple hundred times in the chaper!

"Ares is Mars." Jade answered shortly. Maybe Gwen was taking the place of Naomi.

**I blinked. "Like ... the war god?"**

**Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"**

"Well a lot of people do…"

**"No," I said, recovering my wits. "It explains the bad smell."**

Frank looked up.

"I don't smell that bad do I?"

If he was looking for someone to reassure him, no one did.

We all inched away.

**Clarisse growled. "We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy."**

Don't tell me. Is it getting your head dunked down a toilet?

**"Percy."**

**"Whatever. Come on, I'll show you."**

**"Clarisse—" Annabeth tried to say.**

**"Stay out of it, wise girl."**

"Smooth, does he _want_ his head down a toilet?" Dakota sneered.

**Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it,** **and I didn't really want her help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.**

Nice. I really don't know what to think of that…

**I handed Annabeth my minotaur horn and got ready to fight, **

He trusts her with his minotaur horn?

**but before I knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom.**

Bobby and Dakota high fived. Frank put his hand up to his face to try to smell his breath, Hazel and I moaned in disgust. Octavian had a smirk on his face waiting to hear what would happen to Percy.

Whatever he was wanting to happen, wasn't good. For Percy, I mean.

**I handed Annabeth my minotaur horn and got ready to fight, but before I knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom.**

They take showers in the bathroom?

Everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"Is that even sanitary?" Gwen was just as grossed out as me.

**It smelled just like any public bathroom, and I was thinking—as much as I **_**could **_**think with Clarisse ripping my hair out—that if this place belonged to the gods, they should've been able to afford classier johns.**

Back to my earlier thought, do the gods even care?

**Clarisse's friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I'd used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn't there.**

Because Clarisse isn't trying to kill you. And she didn't kidnap your mother, squeezing her into a gold light.

**"Like he's 'Big Three' material," Clarisse said as she pushed me toward one of the toilets. "Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, he was so stupid looking."**

"Why do they think he's one of the Big Three's sons. Isn't that against the oath? He's very powerful, but they don't know that much yet. And just because your powerful doesn't mean your Dad is King of dead, sky or sea.

**Her friends snickered.**

**Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.**

"You can tell that they're going to be great friends." I said this to everyone sarcastically.

**Clarisse bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head toward the toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets.**

We all shot embarrassed looks at eachother.

"I can't _believe _I am reading this." Nico murmured outloud.

**I strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, I will not go into that. I won't.**

"Hey, at least he finally admitted he didn't want his head there!" Alexander laughed.

True, where this was going, I almost thought he was excited.

**Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder.**

Oh my gods.

**Clarisse's grip on my hair loosened. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.**

EWWWW.

**I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt.**

Gwen started giggling. Pretty soon everyone joined in.

Everyone just continued laughing throughout the scene except Sean. But I could tell that even he was slightly amused.

**The water stayed on her like the spray from a fire hose, pushing her backward into a shower stall.**

I'll have to look up 'The Greek god of Toilet Water' in the college's library.

**She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her.**

**But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.**

Everyone was choking on their laughter. I think I heard

Frank mutter something along the lines of 'how come nothing funny like that happens here?'

**As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water shut off as quickly as it had started.**

**The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn't been spared.**

Hey, she didn't help him when he needed it most. Why should she be spared?

**She was dripping wet, but she hadn't been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly the same place, staring at me in shock.**

I guess she doubted his skills, just like Clarisse had. She didn't have to be so open about it though.

**I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn't have one drop of water on my clothes. Nothing.**

Dakota glowered in jealousy. Do you think that the demigods at the greek camp were more powerful? Maybe. Except for Jason. Maybe he's Greek.

I shook that thought away.

**I stood up, my legs shaky.**

"Well if I used toilet water to attack the camp bullies, I would be just a little skittish too." Jade laughed.

**Annabeth said, "How did you ..."**

**"I don't know."**

**We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk.**

The whole groups stomaches hurt from laughing. Yes we all laughed again.

**Clarisse's hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage.**

I'm gagging at the mental picture in my mind at the moment.

**She gave me a look of absolute hatred. "You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead."**

**I probably should have let it go, but I said, "You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth."**

"That'll teach her a lesson!"

**Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.**

**Annabeth stared at me. I couldn't tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.**

**"What?" I demanded. "What are you thinking?"**

**"I'm thinking," she said, "that I want you on my team for capture the flag."**

"Hey guys! Aren't we playing capture the flag tomorrow?" I asked. Maybe if I—

"Yes Reyna, you would know, you scheduled it after all." Hazel looked annoyed.

"I'm going to bed." Everyone got up to follow her. I was left alone in the clearing to think.

It wouldn't hurt if I…

* * *

><p><strong>AN**

**Sorry this chapter took so long. I was working super hard on it. How about in the next two days, if I get 10 reveiws I will post the first half of the next chapter early, and it will be a bonus chapter.**

**Except there will be no reading, only action. I want in this story, to be more than reading, because to me, I am just copying Rick Riordan and adding a tiny bit of my own stuff. If you don't like it, then review and skip the bonus chapter. **

**This feels like my longest chapter yet. It's 10,136 words and 52 pages. It beats chapter 7 by around one thousand words. So I think it is my longest chapter**

**Sorry for the wait!**

**Please Review!**

**Lilyflower11**


	10. Bonus Chapter!

**Thanks to:**

**God1801**

**Firstinclass: I don't really understand your review? Thanks anyway!**

**Dewfrost314**

**luvsomeone13: Maybe I should have made it a little more clear? I just wanted to show difference between the camps. In Son of Neptune (not a big spoiler) they made it seem like there were separate 'houses' for showering and doing your business. I wanted it to seem 'who would take a shower to get clean, next to something so gross and dirty?**

**DaughterofPoseidon94: Crap, I run into this problem a lot don't I? Alex is a son of Hecate who spends most of his time at Camp Half Blood. The rest you might find out in this chapter… might.**

**Bright Blue 101: Thanks! Maybe I should have posted how many reviews I had originally, that way I could tell when I got to ten 8P**

**Twighlight Nyx: Ummmm, I do look over my work before I post it. I must have overlooked it, so I will read through it and fix it. But I don't know if I will repost that chapter anytime soon because my first priority is to post quick enough that way my readers don't forget about the story. Thanks for telling me!**

**april-babe16: Thanks! Yes I hope to do the whole series, but that is too far into the future. If I were looking towards it right now, I hope to be finished with it all around July or June. I do plan on bringing Percy in around the end of this book.**

**Bonus chapter! **

**Jade's POV**

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><p>That little skumbag! Yes I am fluent in New York taxi speak, therefore, I know names worse than that. But I won't display them to you, just because I care about you.<p>

I can't believe the nerve of Alex. Showing up here and invading my privacy. Blackmailing.

My problem is too hard to explain in conscious thought.

_**Flashback.**_

"Hey citizens of Camp Jupiter! Praetor!" I mentally rolled my eyes.

All I heard was _Blah, blah, blah, Jade, blah, blah. _

What did he say?

Suddenly a hand grabbed my arm, the nails were sharp cutting my skin. I looked up and saw it was Alex who was grabbing my arm.

_Oh gods…_

"NICO!" I screamed. I wanted to scream 'Don't leave me alone with this guy' but the words didn't cooperate with my mouth.

Nico looked startled, and all he did was jump. This didn't happen as fast as it does in movies, at least.

So with the time reality gave me, a grabbed Nico's arm and dragged him down with me. Geez, Alex wasn't that strong!

We got lobbed around on the ground for several minutes like fish outside of the water. I have many bruises from the rocks I had hit, let me tell you, it wasn't fun.

Our kidnapper came to a halt. I, still lying on the ground, looked up for a quick view of our hiding place.

We were in a very familiar clearing. Creepy.

My head thudded back on the ground while I groaned. I turned over and saw Nico doing the same.

But the difference between me and Nico was that Nico recovered faster.

So only minutes later he was standing and looking down at me. Nico frowned, "What was that for?"

I groaned and rolled over again.

Nico wasn't happy with my reply. Egging me on, he kicked my lightly with the sneaker he was wearing.

"Get up!" I don't think the ride to the clearing helped his usually dark mood.

Well I was just as stubborn, the closest I got to standing, was sitting on my knees.

He didn't argue. Instead, his knees crumpled, and he was sitting with me.

I pointed my index finger at our attacker. He was currently facing the opening of the clearing that gave a nice view of camp, with his back facing towards us.

"You. What. The. HADES! Is wrong with you!" I said this between the throbs in my back."

He glanced down at us, as if he hadn't noticed us before. I had to go through this suffering, and he wouldn't notice if I snuck away?

"Oh, I came to deliver a message. Can I stay? It looks fun now!"

"Just tell us the message!" He looked confused to why I was angry.

"Well this doesn't really affect Nico, so you didn't have to drag him here with you."

Nico shot me an irritated look. I know, Nico. But once you get to know this guy, Alex, you realize that all he bears is bad news.

Let's do a recount on the messages he's conveyed to me in the past.

"Hey! Jade guess what? Zeus's master bolt has been stolen!"

"Jade, Camp Halfblood's borders are dying. Guaranteeing the death of all demigods! Greek, that is, we should all just move to the Roman camp!"

Here was my reply to that one, "And risk World War 3? Sure, go ahead." How was I supposed to know that he would take it literally? Thank the gods Chiron stopped him!

Then there was,

"I've got good news, and some bad news. The bad news is that the hope of Greek demigods, Percy Jackson, is going to die on Mount Tam. Or that's what Chiron believes. But the good news is that you and I have got safety here in the Underworld, we could play marbles…"

And,

"The labyrinth has mysteriously collapsed, and half of the camp has died in war. Did I tell you Percy Jackson lived? Yeah, well, it doesn't matter anyways. We don't stand a chance against the titans! Not that I'm taking their side or anything."

I didn't stay around for his next update of the fate of Western Civilization.

I really had no idea where to go, well I guessed New York obviously. But it must have been a secret exit I came out of, because I landed somewhere in the middle of Wyoming. I had no idea which direction where to go, so I guessed which direction was east and failed epically.

Someone finally gave me directions when I was in Olympia, Washington.

Back to the present, of this flashback.

"I am sorry, but the news you always bring discourages me much!"

"Well, I am sorry, but since when is there any good news in a half blood's life?" He said indignantly. Alex had a point there.

But he was so annoying about it!

"Fine, just tell us the news." I stared at the grass in front of me dejectedly.

"Well, this may not be good news to you, but it is for me!" he said in a sickly cheerful voice. "I am head of Hecate cabin, and new Assistant of the Great Goddess(s), of magic, Hecate and Trivia. "

I was too outraged to speak. He thought he could take my position of prestige, just because I have had a week of un-excused absence?

I'd see to it that he goes to the field of punishments!

"Excuse me! I believe you are mistaken! It's taken me years to gain Mother's trust enough to give me such a high point of authority! Does that mean I will lose my magic?" The thought just occurred to me. It's not that her children don't own their own magic, but you receive more of it, when you enter the court of Trivia or Hecate.

You see, when I applied for the job, the Greek position was already filled. Hecate does not care for the differences between Romans and Greeks, so I had just as much a chance.

"Yep! And I will gain it! Isn't this awesome?" He looked expectantly at me. Was I supposed to cheer?

"No, it's not! Why do I deserve this?" I cried, desperation creeping into my voice.

Alex rolled his eyes. "When you went missing, Ares ordered 90 years' worth of magic for his favorite sword. That way it can change from a spear and back, right?" I nodded, last year he ordered the same sort of magic for his spear, that way it could change to a sword and back.

"Well, when his magic wasn't delivered in the 48 hour limit, as we promise, he was enraged. I suppose he thought that we were taking sides with whoever he's at war with now. He has a different opponent every day, it's to hard to keep track."

"So what happened?" I was seriously worried now. Ares was rash and didn't believe anything could stop him from getting his way.

"He attacked mothers castle with a fully armed army."

I gasped. My life is over.

There was no way Mother would accept me back into her court now.

"She was pretty angry you know. And I _was_ your backup/ assistant to the assistant. But now _I_ am the assistant." His voice was smothered in pride. That little…

"Oh yes, it must feel so good to know that the only reason you're on Mother's good list is because of a failure of another." I shook in self pity. But I wasn't about to show weakness yet.

"But that isn't it is it! I get my chance to prove that I am not as weak as you! But only I have the power to give you the second chance!"

"Well what I am doing is important! You know that Percy Jackson went missing a few weeks ago right?" This was my chance at ambush.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're all talk. I already know that Percy has been kidnapped/ whatever. I also know that you're reading the secrets of his life story right now!"

I was shocked. How could he know?

"And this is your second chance! If you let me read it with you, then I will give you your position of authority back and put in a good word about you with Mother." It would take a long time to get her trust back.

Would it be worth it?

"Why would you give that up? Like you said, this is your chance to prove you aren't weak. That's every demigod's dream. Why would you give that up?"

"Because some things are more important. Have you even thought about how important this is, as a whole. Have you thought that maybe this is greater than Mom's gratitude? This will lead to something even greater."

This is hardly important! What could be greater than Mom's gratitude?

"If you get a head start against the other demigods, you will have inside information. You could be a worshipped hero! Did you hear that Percy Jackson was offered immortality?"

He says offered, as if he didn't accept. Only a god could make that offer. No one has enough nerve to refuse a god's offer! Especially such a great one!

"And he didn't accept. Maybe he knew there was something greater?"

Suddenly I don't like the way Alex is speaking.

"Alex, You make Percy sound evil! Rebelling against the Gods! Which I know he's not. There is a thin line between stubbornness and evil rebellion. I've met him before, he's kind and would do anything but. And you sound as if you are planning to…" I couldn't finish that sentence.

Once Alex comprehended what I was pointing towards (which took a while, at least five minutes.) a look of appalled disgust washed over his face.

"I would do nothing of that sort! And maybe, I have met Percy too. If you can believe that! And I thought he was awe-inspiring! I want to be like him. He's my new role model!" Alex's chest puffed up and he stood in a gladiator stance. It made him look ridiculous.

For the first time, Nico spoke up.

"Alex, he may be inspiring, but look where he ended up. Kidnapped without a clue to where he went."

"There is a clue!" He looked at us waiting for Nico and I to exclaim at his brilliance.

Silence…

"Ugh. This is our clue! This is our chance! The book! Obviously his whole life wasn't written in one novel, there must be many. Full of his adventures!"

Nico took it all in fast and replied quickly. "But none of this will help us find Percy. So what's the point?"

Alex looked up hesitantly, "I never told you guys this, but Chiron won't let me in to Camp Halfblood again. That's another reason I need to stay here."

Why wouldn't they let him in? I asked just that.

"Jason Grace arrived. You know the one that went missing here? The same thing that happened to him is happening to Percy. Do you think he'll come here then?"

That kind of made sense. Maybe this is why Lord Mercury sent Reyna the book.

"I allow you to stay here. I will set up a room for you with Reyna. But only if you put me back in Mother's good books." My eyes squeezed shut. I couldn't believe I was doing this. A year ago I would have done anything to get rid of him.

"Good it's a deal!" The book appeared in his hand as he plopped into a sitting position.

"What? Why don't you tell mom that I was locked in a closet at Camp Jupiter so I couldn't complete my quest. So technically it wasn't my fault."

"Mom wasn't angry, she knew that you were reading the book. So she was ok with it. I lied that way I could stay. The rest is true."

I face palmed my face. What was I going to do now?

Just then Frank walked into the clearing.

"Hey we were supposed to meet here to read the book—What is he doing here?"

"I'm staying. Ok? Nothing you can say will make me move. If I do, Jade will die. She took an oath." I did not! We didn't even swear on the river Styx!

Frank looked nervously at me, like I might burst into flames.

He sat down nervously.

Awkward silence…

And we waited for everyone else to arrive.

**End of Flashback**

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><p><strong>AN**

**Hey! I know that this was supposed to come out with ten reviews, but I forgot to post how many reviews we had in the first place. Oops. My bad, oh well.**

**Does this kind of help you understand Alexander better. Was this whole chapter confusing?**

**How many errors in grammar and spelling did I have?**

**I am looking for a Beta to correct my work and give me their opinion on the chapter before I post it and maybe make the chapters less confusing. Another problem is that I need a fast beta. I just mean that it shouldn't take more than 8 days. If you would to be my beta just PM me or comment! You will get an acknowledgement at the beginning of each chapter and you can write a note if you want….**

**Happy Turkey Day to the Americans! (On Thursday)**

**Review!**

**LilyFlower11**


	11. We Meet Calli

**I got the whole rest of the week off so more time to write! As you may have guessed, I have nothing better to do in my free time. Sorry no reading in this chapter either. I just need to get some on these things some of these things over with before I move on. Because I really think It's time for Reyna to stop hating Percy and Annabeth.**

**Bright Blue 101: I didn't mean to make Alexander sound spiteful or evil or anything like that! That can't be his true personality. He just wants to be a hero like Percy. But the only way he can think of to stand out, is by doing something the others have not. Trust me, he isn't evil. Maybe misguided. And Preyna. At first you may not like it, but after a while, it grows on you. But I love Percabeth too.**

**Firstinclass: I have a feeling, if you look real closely (like REALLY close) in your PM inbox (the one in your account) then you might find hate mail from a certain little author. You will find that I give critique just as well as you do.**

**DaughterofPoseidon94: If you feel sorry for Jade now, worse is yet to come :D **

**Jade's POV**

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><p><strong>End of Flashback<strong>

It was after the chapter was finished. I had ran ahead enough to disappear from view of all the other campers reading.

There was a small garden surrounding my tent (I received a tent because A) I told everyone that I would like to room by myself, and B) I hardly visited anyway.) that I guess the Ceres children put there while I was away to make it look prettier.

It's not that I hadn't noticed it before, but now that I thought about it, it looked like a really good hiding spot.

I noticed it after Calliope Emerson popped out from inside the meadow like garden.

The garden was such a good spot because anyone could sneak under the tall flowers in a squat without being identified. The flowers acted like a canopy and you couldn't see anyone under them unless you looked very hard.

"Hi! I'm Calliope!" she leaped up from the flowers giving the allusion that she appeared out of thin air.

I vaguely recognized the 8 year old from meals. It wasn't like I stared at random people at dinner, but you couldn't miss Calliope.

The thing that caught most people attention was her hair.

The color wasn't something you could get from dye.

Her hair was as bright gold as her father's sun chariot, and glowed just as much.

Calliope coughed. Apparently this so far wasn't going according to the plan.

"I mean—Calliope Emerson at your service! Many people call me Sunny you know, EmerSON, but I don't like that. My dad calls me Little Emmy, but I will murder you in your sleep if you call me that too. So that leaves Callope, which is ok I guess. But I prefer to be called Calli."

Calli. Like, Cal-ee. I could live with that.

"Ermm, Ok Calli. I'm Jade Spellman daughter of Trivia. If you want to make fun of my last name do it now."

She looked at me funny.

"Why would I make fun of your last name?" She didn't get it, which was ok because the pun was tiring.

"Nevermind. So what is the pleasure that I owe this visit to you?" I asked politely. The little girl was humoring me.

"You've gotten one thing correct! You owe me a pleasure!" She cried happily.

What?

"I don't think you understand the expression. I used a nicer way of saying what do you want?" I made it clear and blunt this time.

All signs of playfulness dropped from her face. I remember from somewhere that the rumor was that, in addition of being daughter of Apollo, she was a legacy of Minerva.

I could see she inherited Minerva's mood swings.

"You owe me whether you like it or not. I don't know if you heard the rumor, but I have photographic memory. And I picked up a conversation on my way to the Archery targets."

You had to pass our clearing to get to the archery targets. Anyone could have heard us shouting. And I had heard the rumor so I had no doubt that it was true now.

It all depended on how much she had heard.

I evaluated Calli for the first time deciding how much of a threat she was.

The girl was half my height, and had long shining gold hair that reached her waist.

Her eyes were what balanced her colors. They were deep dark blue not a navy shade, but a very dark turquois. They had a glow that matched her hair.

She seemed to be doing the same to me.

After we sized eachother up, I made my decision. She was a very fair threat. A little girl wouldn't know the danger of giving the wrong person the wrong knowledge.

"You should know that I have proof. It was a gift from Daddy."

Why she was allowed to have contact with her father, I did not know. Maybe he favored her.

But what she meant by the gift, I didn't understand. She can pass what she saw to other people by telepathy?

Instead she pulled a slim IPhone out of her pocket and passed it two me.

"I can upload whatever I saw by thoughts. Whatever I want backed up onto here, all I have to do is think about it. And it is monster resistant. With a special song Daddy used, it will repulse every monster in a fifty mile radius so they won't come near."

Crap, this was bad.

I looked at the video content. Sure enough, she must have been following us the whole time to the clearing. She even captured Nico and me being dragged across the ground.

And l saw exactly where she hid, from the view she had gotten of our conversation.

I have really bad posture from the back.

"What do you want?" I growled down at her.

She blinked innocently at me.

"Will you be my slave?"

I choked. "I beg your PARDON!" Geez, this girl was higher educated than I had taken her for.

"It's ok, you don't have to follow me around on your knees. But when I need you to do me a favor, you will do it." The last part wasn't an option, it sounded like a threat.

"Or…"

"Or the whole camp will see that Greeks have infiltrated the camp." She couldn't have picked that up from our conversation!

"How do you know we're Greek?"

"That's for me to know and you to obsess about." She grinned evilly.

"Remember. If anyone finds out, the Romans here like watching the sword cut through your flesh, and your head fall to the ground." She said this while backing up slowly, disappearing into the darkness.

That's when I realized I had been blackmailed twice today.

**Reyna's POV**

I sat there for a while, staring at the book.

It wouldn't hurt if I...

It could help me win capture the flag if I had new tactics.

The rest of the group wouldn't know if I made a peak in the book just once.

But wait, I don't even need the new tactics! With Jason gone, I have no competition. My original plan will go undefeated anyway.

But that's rule #1 in survival isn't it? Never underestimate your opponent. So it can't hurt?

I opened the book to the table of contents. It looks like there is one more chapter until 'We Play Capture the Flag'. The chapter title makes it pretty clear that I am going to have to read another chapter until they play the game.

So if I skip that chapter I'll get the info I need and won't have to feel guilty about reading ahead, right? Right?

"Reyna, you're not reading ahead are you? You know that no one would be happy with you if you did that!"

Little Calli of the fifth cohort stepped out from behind a bush. She must be half nymph! The little girl could blend into any scenery despite her hair.

Must I say that Calli's hair is equal to the sun and caught attention anywhere she went. The only reason she was allowed inside the mortal world was because the mist made her hair look blonde to those without a drop of godly blood in their veins.

"No Calli, I was just thinking. You can't help but be curious when you first learn about the Greek camp, can you Calli? How long have you known?"

The question took her by surprise. It was a long story, but I knew that she was aware of Camp Halfblood.

"How'd you know that I know?"

"I knew that you knew, but I didn't know, but now I do."

We both started giggling at our confusing dialog.

"What I mean, is that when you found out, I knew you knew something that I didn't, but I wasn't sure what. But once I found out there was a Greek camp, I understood that this is what you found out. Does that make sense?"

"Kinda, I guess."

That was the point where we were both were sizing each other up. I got the feeling she had done this not so long ago.

"I just came to warn you."

I didn't understand what she was saying. Did she mean that she wasn't going to blackmail me into letting her read with the group.

The little girl probably didn't understand the value of the book. On the other hand, I didn't either.

We all were walking into a unfamiliar room blind. All we had to trust was that the gods were there. Leading us or misleading us.

"Why would I need to be warned?"

"Things are not as it seems in your pretty little life." Like she would know! She was just a 8 year old!

Didn't I hear a rumor that she had inherited her father's gift of prophesy?

I was about to respond to her 'warning' when I looked down and noticed she was missing.

Odd little girl.

I reminded myself to never drink Coco's Crazy Caffeinated Coffee after dinner.

I picked up the book and carefully made my way back to my tent.

The whole way I made sure to look around carefully for attackers. Every once in a while a monster got through our borders and snuck its way around camp, surprising innocent campers.

And Calli's appearance wore down my nerves.

I hastily ran into my cabin and slammed the door before crouching behind it.

Did I say Calli's appearance made me nervous? I won't pretend like she's a little angel. That girl is a devious little monster.

I slid my back slowly up the door and flipped stomach first. My eye looked through the hole. The scenery looked normal as always.

My hand silently slid to the lock. With a click twist, I made sure any intruder could hear the audible click.

I twisted it several times in order to make sure it worked. I was safe.

I let out a deep sigh before closing the deep purple curtains in front of the windows. After locking those too, of course.

Did I say that Calli wasn't trustworthy? She made me nervous. She was powerful and she knew it.

I set the book on my desk and examined it carefully.

Was it worth betraying my friend's trust? Eh, they were going to be reading it anyway.

I flipped to the correct chapter and began to read.

It started with… **The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal,**

About an hour later, ended with…

**"Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God."**

Well, that was more information than I expected.

I can't believe that Neptune—or Poseidon broke the oath.

That means that two gods had broken the oath! And where would I get a son of Neptune for capture the flag?

The was a good strategy if you _had_ a superpowerful son of sea god!

And no wonder he got away from Circe's Island so fast. He could control boats and water! I think… I had never met one.

That's when I got one of those visions. It was like a demigod dream except I wasn't asleep.

I don't know, maybe I was asleep. I'm too tired to tell.

For some reason my demigod dreams are always on Circe's Island. This one was when I was really little. Six years old or so.

I walked in Aunt Circe's parlor where she usually was.

There was a man standing in the middle of the room surrounded by little guina pigs.

He was shouting angry words at Aunt Circe who was sitting leisurely in a red velvet arm chair.

Just as I saw the man shrinking into one of those hamsters on the floor my mother came and pulled into the hall. She told me that we were going to meet Aunt Circe at dinner.

In fact, though I don't remember them, I know that this has been the situation before.

I also remember that for some reason that it was always men or boys who had been turned into gerbils. Whatever those things were.

And whenever we had women guests, they were rushed to the spa.

Could that have been Percy as a rat? Did Annabeth succeed to save him? Was I the evil one for not forgiving them? Were they actually doing the right thing?

I woke up.

So maybe I was sleeping.

Anyway, I had a lot of things to think over.

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><p><strong>AN**

**Do you know what's really weird? My lucky number is 11 (chapter 11) and when I posted chapter 11 I had 64 reviews! Guess what! My favorite number is 64! Yes, I pick favorite numbers, don't judge. This should be my lucky chapter!**

**Hope you liked this chapter!**

**Please review! Pretty please?**

**-Lilyflower11**


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